Our Challenge [PDF]

Zitiervorschau

The

Battle Plan

for the Creation

of a

New Jewry

RABBI UEIR

KAHANE Founder of the Jewish Defense League

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

OUR CHALLENGE

Digitized

by the Internet Archive in

2016

https://archive.org/details/ourchallengeOOmeir

Rabbi Meir Kahane

OUR CHALLENGE Land The Chosen N K TALK "f

0

'/

CHILTON BOOK COMPANY,

Radnor, Pennsylvania

Copyright

© 1974

by Meir Kahane

All Rights Reserved

First Edition

Published in Radnor, Pa,, by Chilton Book

and simultaneously

in Ontario,

Company

Canada

by Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd, Designed by Adrianne Onderdonk Dudden Manufactured in the United States of America LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Kahane, Meir.

Our 1.

challenge; the chosen land.

Religious Zionism.

relations.

I.

2. Israel.

3.

Jewish- Arab

Title.

DS150.R32K33 1974 ISBN 0-8019-6023-1

956.94'001

74-661

Dedicated to the memory of

Baruch Cohen, hero of the nation

May the L-rd avenge his blood that was spilled in

Madrid, Shvat, 5733

Contents

1

The Challenge

13

2

The Chosen Land

20

3

The Chosen People: Questions

54

4

The Chosen People: Definitions

90

5

The Chosen State: The Jew Without

6

The Chosen

7

The Chosen State: Character and Personality

156

8

The Destiny

172

State:

The Jew Within

112

140

For thou

art a holy people unto the

L-rd thy

G-d: the L-rd thy G-d hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself above all people that ,

are upon the face of the earth.

—Deuteronomy 7:6

shall

Every place whereon the soles of your feet tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and

Lebanon

,

from the

river

,

the river Euphrates,

even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.

There shall be no

man

be able to stand be-

G-d shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath said unto you Deuteronomy 11:24-25

fore you: for the L-rd your

.

—

OUR CHALLENGE

1

The Challenge There

a Jewish destiny. That which happened to the

is

Jewish people that

which

in the past, that

will

happen

in the

which occurs

in

our times,

days and years to come,

is

not haphazard, a

game of chance. The Jewish people

plays

history within the

role

its

in

limits

of divine

ordinance.

We

stand today,

men, women, and history.

all

little

— leaders, captains, elders, ones — before a great moment in of us

Those of us who have been chosen, for some

inexplicable reason, to live in these times of unparalleled

OUR CHALLENGE

14

and unequaled miracles of triumph must surely sense in every fiber of our being that the things that we have seen and experienced are not mere chance.

disasters

The

soul-shattering Holocaust that ripped

third of our people, followed immediately

away a

by the incredi-

ble ending of the incredible Exile, the creation of the third

Jewish commonwealth, the Ingathering of the Exiles

from the four corners of the earth, the smashing of the enemy in Six Days and the return to the Wall and the liberated lands of Judea and Samaria all are parts of the great moment in history before which we stand. It is clear that the Almighty is prepared to bring us into the final deliverance and that the beginning of the

—

redemption

is

under way.

We stand at a historic moment

of deliverance.

But great moments must be grasped.

seized.

They always join together

They wait

to be

the ultimate de-

liverance with a potential for preceding disaster. Sal-

vation

is

invariably coupled with a possible attendant

tragedy that wipes away the terrible It

human

blemish with the

scourge of pain and suffering.

need not be. The great moments that proclaim

oncoming deliverance wait for an instant to be understood and grasped. If we recognize them and respond to them, we are blessed. If we do not, they disappear from view and make us pay a tragic and terrible price before the advent of the deliverance.

And

the

most

terrible part of the price

ability: the fact that

it

avoid-

need not have been paid had

we understood and acted. The great tasks of our day define, teach,

is its

and implement.

are to clearly

and boldly

The Challenge 15

To define

and

clearly

precisely the purpose

and reason for the

tiny of the Jewish people; the purpose

Land of

Israel

and the

between the Jew and the

and des-

state therein; the relationship state; the relationship

between

Jew of the state and the Jew in the Exile; the total aim and destiny of the Jew, his people, land, and state. To teach and implement that definition boldly and relentlessly; to create the kind of Jew and the kind of the

Jewish people that

their sole reason for being; to create

is

and policy within the

the uniquely Jewish kind of state

Land of

Israel that is the sole

reason for having one; to

create the kind of relationship between Jew and Jew and

Jew and

state that

is

the only true

and honest one

in

terms of Jewishness. In a word, our people must be a Jewish people, not

a pale replica of others.

Our

state

must not seek merely

to be like all the rest, but a distinctively Jewish one.

The Jewish people stands or that

it

is

not

like all

on the knowledge other people. The foundation of falls

foundations and the raison d’etre of the Jewish people that

it is

the

is

Chosen People, a godly people— the people

chosen by the Almighty to do that

was

and

fate are decreed

his will. It

is

a people

by G-d and whose existence by him. And from this chosenness,

called into being

and challenge to greatness, flow cerand necessary axioms. If we are chosen,

this call to holiness

tain absolute

then we are a certain kind of people with a certain kind of role and a certain kind of state. There

is

a Chosen

People, a chosen land, a chosen state, and a chosen des-

and the conduct of the Jew and his state must be directed toward that destiny. The normal rules of nationhood and statehood do not apply to us; the normal logic tiny,

OUR CHALLENGE of foreign policy

not ours.

is

Jewish destiny and the shall

endure and

we do not

we obey

command

both

live,

If

in this

the call of the

we

of the Almighty

world and the next.

return to the Jewish role,

price before the ultimate

16

we

will

pay a

If

terrible

redemption comes, wiping away

our sins with the suffering of pain and war.

The creation of

the Jewish people and

The

has a divine purpose.

and the miracles

that have

part of that purpose.

—

and the

this

all

of

it.

of the redemption; it

but

we

accompanied that

will

if

pay a

rebirth are

rebuild their Jewish lives in

Are we capable of understanding

fact that only a truly

of the divine decree?

survival

has been ordained that the Jewish

home and

people return their land

It

its

rebirth of the State of Israel

Jewish state

is

the

aim

we do, we will hasten the advent we do not, we will not only lengthen If

terrible price in the

form of our own

and the soul-sufferings of our youth. Today our youth, many of them, stand confused. Tomorrow there will be more of them and the ideas that to their elders seem basic and easy to understand will sufferings

not be obvious or clearly understood.

We

have taken

these ideas as well as our youth for granted,

and we

stand to lose them both. That will be the price of our

and mistaken self-assurance. We have not given our youth the most basic of human needs, the idea the Jewish idea. Our youth wait for it, as a hungry man neglect

—

for bread.

give

it,

They wait and are prepared

to accept

—

if

we

it.

The idea is if you teach

you have it and believe in and spread it, if you organize pupils

the weapon. it

If

The Challenge

who

will teach

it

and spread

it

to others,

17

you can change

a world. For actions and reactions are predicated upon ideas,

and depending on the idea we

in a certain

way

and

will act

react

— correctly or wrongly, with truth or with

falsehood.

We

of Israel are in a struggle for the

in the State

is growing into manhood. If we wish to win them and not lose them either to the enemy or to the well-meaning fools who would destroy us just as effectively we must have the idea, believe in

souls of the generation that

—

—

it

completely and teach

it

unceasingly.

We

must

minds and hearts and souls of our youth with Let us not

make

the most dangerous of

it

fill

the

daily.

all errors,

and believe that ideological vacuums can remain. Just like their physical counterparts,

they must and will be

filled by something or someone. And there are people and groups today who are working hard and tirelessly to fill the fertile minds of our youth with their own ideology.

Let us not underestimate

them or

their

numbers. Let us

not be so foolish as to believe that small numbers

mean

impotency or that sacred cows remain permanently sacred.

That which seems indubitably true and axiomatic to us is

is

not necessarily so for the next generation.

What

holy to one leaves the second indifferent, while the

upon it as profane. We can lose our youth and we can watch them lose our values through our apathy and indifference, our failure to give them burning ideals to match the ideas of others. We can also lose them third looks

through weak, unconvincing arguments that leave the

OUR CHALLENGE youth troubled,

and

dissatisfied,

lose the battle for

unfulfilled.

our youth, we

And

18

if

we

will ultimately lose

every other battle.

The

battle has already started.

the wreckers

and the moral

Already the Left,

anarchists, have

made deep

among the youth even though we, our preoccupation with the more prosaic things in

ideological gains in

do not recognize it. The Left has always understood the power of ideas. It is time that the nationalist camp understood this also. The primary battleground is life,

not the Knesset but the schools, the campuses, the

—

wherever our youth and their minds are. As one who spends much time among every section of our youth, I can see the danger and the potential

streets

opportunity In these pages .

I

Jewish ideas that your youth

shall try to present ideas, will

Although these ideas are represent

much

accept and cherish.

my

own,

clearly

they

of the thinking of the Jewish Defense

League in Israel. It would be logical to assume that the program of the League in the Jewish state will be based

upon many of

the ideas in this book. Just as there

need for physical defense,

we

believe, so

is

is

a

there at least

as great a need for spiritual defense.

The

ideas put forward in this

book are not only

more important, they are Jewish ideas, drawn from Jewish sources and tradition. In the end, that is the only honest program for a Jewish state and a Jewish individual. That which marks us as different and which gives us a right and reason to set ourselves up as a separate nationality, state, and entity is our unique sound

ideas;

Jewishness.

That Jewishness can only be expressed

The Challenge

19

through Jewish concepts and those concepts can only be derived from Jewish sources. In short, I intend simply to

fundamental thoughts of Judaism. The pity that many Jews have never stopped to listen to them.

restore the is

There may, therefore, be many

some of

who will

be upset by

the ideas in this book. Yet they cannot claim

that these are not Jewish ideas that have throughout the

centuries represented the mainstream of Jewish thought.

Those who oppose them would do well to honestly search their own minds and hearts and to discover whether their ideas are not really the products of intellectual and ideological assimilation. I love the Jewish people and think that there is no greater and deeper pride than that of knowing that one is a Jew. in

it

I

love the Jewish state, the

the

Land of Israel, and

hand of the Almighty, the

vision of the Prophets.

Jew and

And

see

realization of the

precisely because

one loves

must he speak up in admonition and criticism. So long as one is motivated by love, that admonition and demand for change are not only valid but obligatory. I would do the same for my sons and daughters, precisely because I love them so. If I did not I would not care what they did or what they would become. It is because a Jew must love his people and state, must care about them and their fate, that it is so important that we define the Jewish people and state, and work to the

create

them

the land,

in the

image of Jewishness.

The Chosen Land

Judean fortress of Bethar fell to the Roman legions of the Emperior Hadrian. In a bloody con-

In the year 135 the

frontation tens of thousands fell. revolt, the legendary

“son of a

The leader of the Judean star,” Bar Kochba, was

found dead, and the people of Judea were scattered to the four corners of the earth, there to begin an Exile un-

precedented in persecution, in stubborn survival, and in faith in Return.

Hadrian, furious with the stubborn and rebellious

The Chosen Land

21

people, undertook to totally eradicate their pernicious

and to wipe out the memory of their nationhood and land. Edicts were issued accompanied by the death

faith

— —forbidding the Jewish Sab-

penalty in case of violation

bath to be observed, outlawing the circumcision of

and banning the study of Torah. Under the supervision of the procurator Rufus, the plow was drawn over the city of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount as a sign that Zion was forever buried, and plans for a new city, Roman in form and pagan in character, were drawn up. The name Jerusalem was erased and the new city called Aelia Capitolina. A column was erected in honor of Hadrian, and memorials, temples, and statues dedicated to Roman, Greek, and Phoenician gods defiled the Holy Land. One other thing was done. The name of Judea, the home of the Jewish people, was changed to Palestine. Had Hadrian suppressed his desire to erase the memory of Jews and their state, and not changed its name, it is conceivable that the Jews of Israel would be faced today with “Judean” terrorists. The time has come to declare a policy for Israel and its Jewish supporters that clearly, loudly, and pointedly proclaims that there never was, there is not now, and

children,

there never will be such a thing as a “Palestine” people

The Land of Israel, Eretz Yisroel, is the land of the Jewish people, and no one else’s, in all its historical boundaries. In the face of public and strident Arab hate and threats to destroy us totally, all those who live under or state.

the illusion that “compromise” will bring peace and security to Israel are either fools or knaves.

OUR CHALLENGE

22

The only hope for the Jewish people to preserve their own state and existence, a right claimed by all peoples,

on to every inch of the land they push with all their strength for a massive Jewish immigration and settlement in all parts of the land, and promote a program that will convince the hostile Arab minority both in the liberated lands and is

to hold

liberated in 1967,

in

the

little

Israel” of pre-June 1967 that their

own

best

would be served by emigrating to other lands. Let us examine these points more carefully. On a clear night more than three millennia ago, a man named Abraham stood in the desert and heard the voice of G-d say: “. Lift up now thine eyes and look from the place where thou art, northward and interests

.

.

southward

and eastward and westward, seest, to thee will I

a

will

I

give

it

for all the land which thou

and

to thy seed forever.

And

make

man

thy seed as the dust of the earth, so that if can number the dust of the earth then shall thy

seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee (Genesis 13: 14-17). The promise of the L-rd to the first

“Sojourn

Jew was

in this land

(Genesis 26: 3-4);

repeated to his son and to

his:

unto Abraham thy father” “And, behold .... of the earth be .

.

.

blessed

(Genesis 28: 13-14). And the promised boundaries of the Land were clearly stated to the father of the nation: “In that same day ... and the Jebusites” (Genesis 15: 18-21). .

“Unto the L-rd is the earth and all that is in it.” The creator of the universe, who gives and takes away, gave unto his people the Land of Israel as theirs, alone and without reservation. This is the Jewish claim to

The Chosen Land Israel.

Upon

23

this claim the children of Israel returned

from the slavery of Egypt to liberate the land and create their Kingdom. Upon this claim they lived there for hundreds of years from the time of Joshua until the destruction of the first Temple. Upon this claim they returned from their Babylonian exile to set up yet another Jewish state that survived hundreds of years more. On this claim they wandered through two millennia

of exile, never forgetting, daily repeating their claim to the land from which they were driven, surviving until political Zionism realized the vision that the believing

Jew had kept There

is

alive

.

a Jewish people, the same that began with

Abraham. There is a Jewish state, the home of that Jewish people from the time of the first divine promise. This is

the Jewish claim.

It is

not a plea.

have no but

home

Israel.

It is

but

It is

not a request.

a claim and

Israel;

But within

it

It is

brooks no denial.

we have no claim

this

not an offer.

one small

to

We

any home

state, that

claim

is

The Land of Israel is the land of the Jewish people, whose claim to sovereignty over it all of it is clear and as ancient as G-d’s decision to grant that

absolute.

—

—

sovereignty.

A

“Palestine” people?

diction in terms. There

is

The concept

is

a contra-

Land There is no

either a “Palestine” or a

and we declare for the latter. and if there is no “Palestine,” there is no “Palestine” people. Arabs? Yes. Those Arabs who dwell and who dwelt for years within Eretz Yisroel are indeed part of the Arab people or nation and we respect and

of

Israel,

“Palestine”

recognize that definition. But they are not “Palestinians,” for there never

was such a concept. The Arabs who

OUR CHALLENGE

24

wandered into the Land of Israel while it lay desolate and empty of its exiled Jewish sons and daughters came as trespassers and interlopers. The passage of time, no matter how much time, cannot make legal that which is illegal. The claim of Arabs to have lived within the land for years or centuries

irrelevant in terms of a claim to

is

Arab national sovereignty. And how much more so when “Palestine” was always looked upon as nothing more than southern Syria. As individuals who arrived and lived in the Land of Israel while there was no Jewish state, they are free to live and prosper. Under claim of national right, they are entitled to nothing. Jews have a

sovereign national right to the land as a people and

under

this,

each Jew has a right to

live in Israel.

Arab, with no national sovereignty claim, be allowed to

live

may

The

ask to

Eretz Yisroel, but can expect

in

nothing more than that. It is

this

most basic of concepts that gives Jews not

only the right to their

own

but the right to a state

state,

within the entire boundaries of the

a fictitious “Palestine” nor a no are anything

more than

of Eretz Yisroel.

To

Land of Israel. Neither

less fictitious

“Jordan”

interlopers within the boundaries

be sure, the Jewish leaders in 1947 re-

luctantly accepted a Jewish state

whose boundaries were

not only absurdities but enclosed only a small fraction of Eretz Yisroel. Their acceptance of these boundaries in no

way meant acquiescence

in

any foreign claim

to parts of

Eretz Yisroel but a willingness to accept a desperately

needed

state

and a condition of peace. Their motives were

not acquiescence in or recognition of foreign claims, or the

waiving of Jewish

rights,

but a desire for peace and a

The Chosen Land postponing of Jewish claims

Messiah comes and

until the

resolves kushyot v'bayaot (probelms In return for

and

difficulties).

peach and a genuine recognition of

the Jewish richt to a state,

up

25

Jews were

willing, not to give

their rights, but not to press their rightful claims. But

when

the

Arabs chose to deny any Jewish

right

to war, the Jewish claim to all the land that

armies became

clear.

What happened

was do not seek war: one Jewish Jewish land that

upon

forced

under foreign

is

us and Jewish bodies

What happened The choice

is

in the past

its

its

We

people.

the

all

But when war

rule. fall

to

and again

not worth

life is

land that returns to us remains

future.

in 1948

that Jewish land returned to

in 1967

and went fell

,

is

then the historic

— never to be returned. can happen again

in the

that of our enemies. If they seek to

retain that part of the

Land of

Israel

which they hold,

make peace and, while we will not ever up our claim, we will not press it. If they seek to

they need only give

persist in creating a “Palestine,” they

part of Eretz Yisroel which

is

not recognize their right to the will

in their hands.

name

We

its

will

or the state but

not press our claim. But should they again

upon war, then much more Jewish to

can do so on that

we

insist

territory will return

rightful owners.

What is the Arab of Eretz Yisroel? A human being, and we respect him for that and must treat him accordingly. What else is he? A member of the Arab nation, and we respect him for that. But he is no more than that: he

is

state,

not a “Palestinian” belonging to a “Palestine”

because

Jewish claim

both rests

designations

are

fictitious.

upon divine grant and

The

historical

OUR CHALLENGE

26

on that grant, and even if there were no questions of security, the state and the boundaries of that state would be Jewish for historical reasons alone. continuity based

Yet there is a security question, a question that goes to the heart of the existence of the Jewish state and the lives of

its

inhabitants. This question of security

concerns the liberated lands, the Arabs

who

live there,

the Arabs of pre-1967 Israel and, indeed, the entire ArabIsrael conflict. All of these

problems, from a security

number of dangerous carefully and dispel. We

standpoint, have given rise to a

we must look at do so at our own peril. The first illusion can be stated as: “If only Israel shows ‘moderation,’ a willingness to ‘compromise,’ and is prepared to make ‘concessions’ to the Arabs,

illusions that fail

to

peace can be achieved.”

Anyone who

thinks this

way encourages

the

de-

and impious pressures, the fact remains that there will be no peace between Jews and Arabs so long as there remains a Jewish state of any kind, no matter how small. Regardless of what concessions Israel might make to the Arabs be they the modest concessions of a Golda Meir or the struction of Israel. Despite pious hopes

maximalist concessions of the that

is

now

Israel

is

Israeli Left

—

all of the

land

considered by the Arabs to be part of

no difference to the “Palestinian” between the soil of Hebron on the West Bank or that over which are built the Jewish coastal villas of Herzliya and Savyon. “Shehem (Nablus) is like unto Tel Aviv and Haifa and Jericho are both mine,” sayeth the Arab

“Palestine.” There

nationalist.

the

name

is

So long

as there remains a Jewish state with

of Israel, the Arabs will never agree to peace.

The Chosen Land If that is

27

a depressing prognosis, far better for pundits

to be depressed than for Israelis to

succumb

to false

hopes and be exterminated.

One

finds

it

difficult to

understand those

who claim

that a return of the lands liberated in 1967 will bring

peace closer.

If that is

drawback to peace in the the world did Nasser want in 1967, the major

Middle East, what in the Arabs had all the

when

On

returned?

consuming

all

of “peace”

now

ask to be

Arab world was an orgy of hate and describing in what it was going to do when it captured June

4,

1967, as the

itself in

intimate detail

Tel Aviv,

territory they

—

the areas

it

now wants

the Sinai, the

Gaza

returned as the price

Strip, the

—were in

West Bank of

What

the Jordan, the

Golan Heights

was the

fight

about then?

about

1956 when Nasser, with Soviet aid, prepared to

in

its

hands.

And what was

the fight

was not sitting in Hebron and Sinai as it does today? And what in heaven’s name did the Arabs want returned in 1948 when the United Nations Partition Plan created a grotesque and impossible Jewish state that encompassed a mere 13 percent of the land* originally mandated by the League of Nations? In all the wars that the Arabs forced upon the Jews since 1948, and indeed in all the terror and pogroms of the Arab nationalists since 1919, the aim was clear: no Jewish State at all. This proposition, I put it, is unacceptable for the Jews of Israel. Thus, without a change of Arab heart, which is nowhere to be seen, there will be no peace. wipe out an

Israel that

Including Transjordan.

— Ed.

OUR CHALLENGE

28

One laughs— but is not amused— at those who point to the statements made by certain Arabs that they are now willing to accept Israel’s existence. In the face of the volumes of hate, threats, and solemn oaths to wipe out Israel, what conceivable faith can be placed in such obviously

motivated

politically

Having

statements?

and perceiving the need for world support, the Arabs must carefully, although temporarily, shelve the old truths and prewipe out

failed to

Israel militarily

more modest and balanced image. “Throw the Jews into the sea? Heaven forbid! All we seek is a return of what is ours.” It is an unfunny joke. The clear fact remains that even if an Arab leader exists who would seriously accept the existence of Israel, he would not long survive the signing of a pact and the pact would sent a

not long survive him.

Any

pullback by Israel to the impossibly dangerous

border of June 1967 would be followed by a denunciation

Arab opposition elements would be faced with a fait accompli accompan-

of the peace agreement by

and ied

Israel

by

at least three

days of world sympathy.

Concessions? Compromise? Moderation? Foolish exercises in self-delusion

Arab state and

the

It

and

is

believes

—as

and

self-destruction so long as

he does

—that

Israel

is

a bandit

that the Jews have stolen “Palestine.”

— more than the Jewish — understand and respect the reality of Arab

because we

liberals

nationalism, that

we

realize the futility of expecting the

nationalist to give

up

dream? Would we

lose

nationalist.

leftists

his

dream. Would we give up our

our hope? Neither

will the

Arab

The Chosen Land

The problem

is

that time

tenacious; conversely,

never-ending

it is

struggle

is

the

29

always on the side of the

enemy of

erodes

the

the weary.

The

determination

achieve total victory and pushes tired

men

to

into the

search for solutions and compromises that are often

more

mon

the product of the desire to rest than that of

com-

sense.

Those who are

allow themselves to believe

tired

what freshness of vigor would label as nonsense. Exhaustion and monotony push us into self-delusion. We become partners to our own destruction as we fool ourselves into believing that madness is sanity, war is

—

good all so that we might return to a life of peace and normalcy. Time is also on the side of the aggressor and works against his intended victim. For it gradually washes out of our minds the past moment of danger, the time when the aggressor sought to attack, plunder, and destroy. That moment of awful truth from which the victim was barely saved fades from his memory. And with the recedpeace, evil

is

come arguments cloaked

ing of the terrible reality

peculiar morality that flourishes in the rarefied

the

air of the ivory tower.

as the that to

in

waves of time

moment

whom we

who

roll

monuments to we turn away from the men

over the stark

of extinction,

rushed for safety, the generals and soldiers

and we begin to to the unreal academics, whose frustrations and

exist in the harsh

listen

With the passing of the danger,

envy of the men of

world of

reality are

reality,

too often mistaken for

and moral loftiness. Our combination of weariness and forgetfulness

spiritual

OUR CHALLENGE turns us

away from common

sense and into the arms of

the denizens of the ivory tower, the

opportunists.

away

It

is

moments

at

30

demagogues and the we throw

like this that

and lose the strength that alone can save us, that alone can enable us to snatch defeat from the jaws sanity

of victory.

Perhaps

common

it is

more so with us Jews,

to all peoples, perhaps

this inability to

it is

withstand victory.

But regardless of the ultimate roots of the problem, the fact

remains that

five

years after 2.6 million Jews,

together with their nineteen-year-old state, were saved

from extinction,

larger

and larger numbers of those who

were almost slaughtered seek to return again to the

moment

of truth.

Forgotten are the 1967 pronouncements from Cairo,

Damascus, Amman,

Baghdad, and Fatah. Forgotten are the pledges to throw us into the sea, wash Tel Aviv clean with Jewish blood, and eliminate the Beirut,

“gangster state” of Israel. Forgotten are the insanity of

borders that

the coastal strip with

left

its

million Jews

under the guns of Arab armies just twelve, thirteen, or fifteen kilometers

away. Forgotten are the

shells that

swept into Masaryk Square in Tel Aviv and the Egyptian planes just minutes are our

own

away from

the heartland. Forgotten

projections of tens of thousands of soldiers,

and perhaps fifty thousand the borders that

left

civilians, dead.

settlements

Forgotten are

on the Huleh Plain

naked beneath the Golan Syrian guns, the hills of Ephraim dominating Tel Aviv and its sister cities, the

lying

Sinai with

its

distance of our

Egyptian land armada within spitting cities.

But forgotten most of

all

are the

The Chosen Land

31

solemn pledges of extermination, the schoolbooks with their poisonous venom, the glee and ecstasy of the days of May and early June 1967 hate, the bitter enmity, the

when

the

mobs and

potential murderers

and

rapists

were

lashing about in an agony of anticipation of the great jihad, the “holy is

the reality of

that

is

war” that was about to begin. Forgotten

Arab

even one

changing

refusal to recognize a State of Israel

dunam

square. Forgotten

What

is

extermination of the Jew land.

It is

is

the never-

“Hebronism.” “Hebronism”? It is the Arab policy of

reality of

who

seeks to live in his

own

the reality of that August day of 1929 that saw

men, women, and children slaughtered homes, and shops of Jewish Hebron.

in the streets,

It is

the reality of

and torture and gouging to death, not of “Zionists,” but of yeshiva students and their families, of Ashkenazim and also of Sephardim (the latter who have suddenly become “Jewish Arabs” in the propaganda of Fatah). It is the pogroms of 1920, 1921, 1936-39, and 1947. In short, “Hebronism” is that policy of Arab treatment of Jews that would be the rule for us every day of the week could our enemies only accomplish it. Should we be so insane as to listen to the “doves” among us who would let them do just that? We are inundated with all kinds of illusions and delusions. Let us return this land or that land and we will have blessed peace. Let us not dare to settle Jews in Eretz Yisroel lest it anger the Arabs and jeopardize blessed peace. Let us make partial and semipartial and total and semitotal agreements that call for compromise and we shall have blessed peace. Let us not move Arabs the rape

OUR CHALLENGE from the borders and

bomb

terrorists lest

settle

we

“better than they are”

hit

—

Jews

32

there; let us not dare to

innocent civilians;

let

us be

and thus gain blessed peace.

Let us recognize the existence of a “Palestine people” despite the refusal of every other at

a time

when they might

Arab country to do so, have set up a partial

at last

“Palestine” state after 1947. Let us negotiate with our

mayors of Gaza and Shehem and Hebron, for they are the solution to the problem of peace. Let us, friends the

perhaps, even consider a binational state for the sake of blessed peace. Let us realize that

brotherhood with the Arabs by

we can reach peace and

political concessions

and

compromises. It is

time for the Jew in Israel to throw away those

negative attitudes that he retains from the Galut, the

among these is an unwillingness to look at bitter reality. We may not enjoy hearing it, but the truth is that for many years at least there will not be a sincere de jure peace with the Arabs. It may affect the tender souls of the more spiritually intellectual among us, but Exile. Chief

one can never attain either peace or security by “com-

who have no

promise” with bitter enemies

intentions of

in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza who do sit down with you because they have no choice, do so only in the hope of getting rid of you as soon as possible. Our enemy, in the long run, is weariness. It is against this enemy that we must struggle. We must gird ourselves with tenacity and determination

compromising with you. Those

never to struggle.

tire

of what appears to be a never-ending

For that

is

what

it

struggle for Jewish existence

may

very well become: a

and a Jewish

state that will

never cease to be a struggle; a realization that between

The Chosen Land us and the Arabs stands a massive barrier that

33

may

never be breached; a determination by two peoples to live in

a land that at least one will never compromise

on. There will

grow the weariness of having

our children to the army without stop. There

to send

will

grow

the weariness of having to leave each year for reserve duty. There will

grow

on the borders or bus terminal. weariness

the weariness of terrorist attacks

at the

There

Lod

will,

airport or at the Tel Aviv

perhaps,

again grow the

—and the heartbreak— of victims of a new war

of attrition. There will grow the weariness of rising to a crescendo with the frustrating cry: it

finally

all this,

“When

will

end?”

Only the weak succumb to such frustrations; only the weak surrender to Time. A strong and tenacious people know that there may never be an end to the struggle and the sacrifice. But they also look about them

and

see

what

their refusal to surrender has accomplished:

much of our Eretz Yisroel; a Jewish state with nearly three million souls and many more to come; the creation of a new and proud Jew. None of these things would have come about had we a state, and today a big one, in

listened to the intellectual precursors of

our modern-day

and doves. In the name of “peace” there would be no Jewish state; in the name of “morality” there would be no free Jewish nation. If we hope to survive in the literal sense of the word, let us not succumb to the siren call of easy answers and intellectuals

the tempting promise of “peace.”

Above

all,

let

us,

have no illusions. The Arabs intend to wipe us we must be strong enough to stop them. The Arabs

please,

out;

who

live

with us in Eretz Yisroel, both those

who have

OUR CHALLENGE

34

done so for twenty-five years and those for just five, do not love us and never will— and one cannot blame them. Let us not play games with them or with ourselves. We give them civil rights and political freedom, but what

Jew

will ever agree that

What Jew

they should become a majority?

will ever agree to

allow Arabs to

come

in

on

same terms as Jews do today under the Law of state. Arabs may have social, economic, and much political equality but, in the end, it is not their state. For the individual Arab we offer much, but for the Arab nation, Israel offers nothing. It is not an Arab state, it is a Jewish state. It came into being because Jews knew that for them there was no hope in a world that thirsted for their bodies and souls. It came into being under the realization that neither king nor republican nor Marxist had the solution to the Jewish problem. That in the end it was the words of the

the

Return? Israel was formed as a Jewish

rabbis that proved to be eternally true: “It

known that Esau hates Jacob.” And so, Eretz Yisroel, the land exists. It

is

a law,

it is

of the Jewish people,

can never be anything but that and both we

and the Arabs know it. Such a fact allows for few illusions over peace. Perhaps peace will

come some

one, doubt

us not listen to the de-

it.

Until

lusions that float

it

does,

let

day;

I,

for

down to us daily from the ivory tower or

—

from the self-hating Left. Strength and tenacity they and they alone assure Jewish survival. A second dangerous illusion that must be dispelled is the one that states: “The policy of the government of Israel not to officially declare

Jewish sovereignty over

the liberated lands, but nevertheless to hold

on

to

them

The Chosen Land

35

with a vague promise of readiness to return parts, has

proved to be a great success.” This liberal attitude of Israel manifests itself on the one hand by Jewish refusal to allow Jews to settle in any of the West Bank cities, to settle major areas of the region, or to pray without limitation in the second holiest of

Jewish shrines, the Cave of the Patriarchs

On

in

Hebron.

the other hand, this policy allows Arabs to cross

from Jordan and into Jordan, lands to raise the economy and tourists visit Israel rates

invests lets

money

in the

Arab laborers and

almost without restriction, collabo-

even with Arab leaders whose

activities

during

massacres of Jews are known, and encourages a feeling that

some day the Arabs of the West Bank

pendent. This policy,

it

is

said,

will

be inde-

has proven to be a

resounding success as evidenced by the fact that peace

and tranquility have been the rule in the lands and a growing trust and closeness has been created. Stuff and nonsense. The “peaceful” Arab has been so only because he feels beaten and helpless in face of the Jewish army and the excellent Israeli intelligence service with its network of paid informers. If the present not situation continues and a new generation of Arabs wedded to the soil or the fellah (peasant) mentality it produces grows up well educated, urbanized, and extreme in its thinking, we will see an end to the idyll. But far more important are the terrible, negative

—

—

results of the

government’s policy. In the short run

policy appears to be a success, but in the long run

prove to be disastrous. In the end, the

it

this

can

Why?

Arabs alone can never hope to over-

OUR CHALLENGE come

They

Israel.

need outside help.

will

important help they can get themselves. in

If

will

come from

the most

the Israelis

the greatest of Israeli weapons, confidence

rightness of our cause,

the

And

36

is

overcome,

if

large

numbers of Israelis can be led to believe that there is something immoral about Israel’s stand on the “Palestine” question, then we will see in Israel a repetition of the United States’ Vietnam tragedy, wherein hundreds of thousands of Americans actively participated in attacking government policy and in helping the enemy to win the kind of diplomatic victory it could never have hoped to gain on the field of battle. The present policy of the Israeli government toward “Palestine” will do exactly that in Israel. If, for example, the West Bank Judea and Samaria was really

—

—

ours, really Jewish, then Israel should have declared so

immediately after the June 1967 war. then, the world protest.

would not have opened

A man who

thing that he

Had

they done so its

mouth

has regained possession of some-

lost, leaps

One who does not do

on

it

and shouts, “This

is

mine.”

so brings into question his

own

legitimacy; he raises grave doubts as to whether he really the rightful

hold on to

part of

it

it,

to

is

owner, and when he then continues to

making

to the one

all

kinds of vague offers to return

who was

holding

it

in the past,

he

is

patently less than genuine.

Such a lesson is not lost on the minds of thousands of young Israelis. They are not fools and neither are they imbued with the attitude of their predecessors that allowed the in the

Israeli

latter to

name

excuse every seeming inconsistency

of the Jewish people. This failure of the

Government

to take a resolute stand, this “halting

— The Chosen Land

37

between two opinions,” has seriously eroded the confidence in the policies

and morality of

their

own

state

of more youth than the government would like to admit.

This

is

the most dangerous thing that can happen to a

nation and

its

consequences, as we well know, can be

disastrous. If

we wish

to avoid a terrible rise in mistrust of the

government by our young; rise

of a conviction

lation that if

we

among

if

we want

to prevent the

various sectors of our popu-

are indeed a conquering and robbing army;

we wish to make

it

very clear to any budding Arab

no amount of pressure will avail them anything since we do not intend to leave; if we hope to keep secure borders; if we want to shut off the protests of the hypocritical world; above all, if we intend to realize the enormous miracle and promise of Jewish renaissance and return to historic Eretz Yisroel then the present policy of trickery, ruse, and dishonesty must be abandoned. In its place a new, honest and direct policy must be implemented that consists of: (I) immediate permission nationalists that

—

for Jewish settlement in every part of the liberated lands, city

and countryside;

(2)

crash programs for immediate

Jewish settlement directly in the heart of major

cities

such as Hebron, Shehem, Jericho, Gaza, and Ramallah that will direct

new immigration

into these areas

and the

creation of western-style cities with western capital to attract western immigrants.

In a word, the liberated

lands must be speedily and immediately re-Judaized.

what must be done to bury the concerning the territory and population of the

This, in brief, illusions

liberated

lands

as

is

well

as

the

general

Arab-Israeli

OUR CHALLENGE conflict.

There remain, however, other

38

illusions concern-

ing one other aspect of the Jewish-Arab dispute: the

Arabs of the State of These Arabs

Israel within the

pre-1967 borders.

are, of course, a part of the general

Israel-Arab struggle, and even if there were no outside Arabs to contend with, they would pose a tremendous problem in themselves. As a minority, and a growing one, that lives in our midst as part of the state and yet not quite part of

it,

problem that

they will in the years to

will

come become a

cause severe internal conflict and

strike at the very roots of the state.

Concerning them,

just as with the general Arab-Israel dispute,

we have

begun to cherish dangerous illusions. We must begin to disabuse ourselves of the illusion the demon of Arab demography will be disposed of that by getting rid of the lands that hold a million post-June1967 Arabs. I put it to one and all that the problem of Arab numbers and an ever-growing Arab minority will not be disposed of by disposing of the territories, and that this gnawing problem exists in the form of the Arabs of that part of Israel that existed before 1967. Indeed,

hasten to add, the Arabs within what

Green

line” will pose a far

is

known

I

as “the

more dangerous and explosive Hebron and Gaza. What I

threat to Israel than those of

am

really saying

is

that the signing of a peace treaty with

the Arabs, the setting free

up of a “Palestine”

state that

is

and independent, the recognition of Israel by the

Arabs

—

fulfilled,

all

these impossible dreams, even

if

they were

would still leave Israel with an Arab time bomb blow up the state and bring to life all the prob-

that could

lems we thought were solved.

The Chosen Land

39

somehow be achieved own new Israel. What will happen is

Let us assume that a peace will

and

all

the “outside” Arabs plus those in their

“Palestine” state will accept

that Israel will not have been freed of an

problem.

It

will

lation problem.

Arab

nationalist

not have been freed of an Arab popuIt

will

not have been freed of a large

body that hates the Jewish majority and the Jewish state and seeks its destruction or at least its total overhaul and change of identity. All of these problems will remain in the form of the Israeli Arabs. Concerning these Arabs, we have begun to believe all kinds of myths. Thus our third dangerous illusion: “The way to reach peace and understanding between Jew and Arab is to raise the Arab standard of living and create a new generation of educated Arabs. Already, Israel has suc-

ceeded in raising the living standards of its

own Arabs to

Arab world and more enter high schools and and where more Arabs universities each year. If this continues there is hope of the point where they are the highest in the

bridging the Arab-Israel gap.”

No

nationalist

was ever bought by an indoor

toilet

home. And that is exactly what those who preach peace through materialism are doing. They are buying, or attempting to buy, the Arab nationalist and his love and pride in nationhood and state. Such an attempt is as immoral as it is self-defeating. What the “moderates” and the “compromisers” do not realize is that the Arab nationalist is as committed to his own people and to what he considers his own land as the Jews

and

electricity in his

of Israel are to theirs. sincerely

The Western

colonialists

and honestly believed that they were

who

benefit-

OUR CHALLENGE

40

and Africans whom they ruled, found that arguments fell on deaf ears of native peoples who

ting the Asians their

poverty with independence to high living

preferred

Why should we expect the different? Why should they not have the

standards under foreign rule.

Arabs to be any same pride that Certainly

Israelis

with

this

peasants,

illiterate

expect their children to have?

large

present

generation,

mostly

numbers can be “bribed.”

But in the years to come, as the sons of the peasants

become educated contemptuously

and extremists, they

nationalists

reject

our “favors.” No,

let

will

us not deceive

ourselves into believing that by raising the

Arab

living

standards we will win his peace and friendship.

The

illusions concerning education are

even more

incomprehensible. Has not history shown a hundred times over that

who

it

precisely the educated intellectuals

is

and extreme?

are the most nationalistic

fellah, the Israel,

Arab peasant, who

but rather his son

from there to the

not the

the danger to peace with

is

who

It is

goes to high school and

university. He,

who

has economic

undreamed of by his father, will the Jew for allowing him to enter

opportunities that were

not be “grateful” to

new

worlds. Quite the contrary.

The

Arab sits and reads of the great nationalist movements of history, demands the same for his own people and land, acquires the knowledge, sophistication, and tools of leadership and becomes the most extreme, the most nationalist, and the most talented of the Arabs. Peace and understanding from the university

university

Arabs? Anything but.

And

despite this

most elementary

those in the government

who

lesson, there are

are able to speak about and

The Chosen Land

41

an Arab university. Money for the poverty areas of Israel, we do not have. Money to meet the comfind funds for

munal gap, we are

told,

is

to finance a school for

leaders

who

will

suddenly appear.

There at

our

Arab

extremist

nationalists,

lead the battle for our destruction,

We

Jews are indeed a strange people.

another aspect of the problem that we ignore

peril. It is

in 1967

who

is

simply nonexistent. But funds

who

not only the Arab of the lands liberated

conceives of himself as a “Palestinian” and

believes that the

The Arab who

Jews have stolen

homeland.

his

one who

lived in pre-1967 Israel, the

is

granted Israeli citizenship and has been an Israel citizen

and equal Arab citizen of the Jewish state thinks exactly the same way. And if he is a young Arab, who was born after Israel came into being and lived his whole life under Israeli sovereignty, he feels even more strongly about it. since 1948, the free

He does not conceive of himself as he

is

part of the state:

an Arab, not a Jew; a “Palestinian,” not an

He does

Israeli.

not feel he owes loyalty to his government;

he does not look upon

it

as his government.

He

resents

and hates the Jewish majority. He is at heart as strong a “Palestinian” and Arab nationalist as the West Bank Arab, and because of guilt feelings engendered by his acquiescence in Israeli citizenship, he greater

is

a potentially

and more dangerous one. He wants

Arabism. He

by various government

an equal

And

to

prove

his

rejects categorically the constant assertion officials that the Israeli

Arab

is

citizen of the state.

here

we come

to the final illusion:

“The

Israeli

Arab is equal to the Israeli Jew in the Jewish state.” So long as Israel remains the Jewish state, and that

OUR CHALLENGE reason for being; so long as Israel

is its

42

the fulfillment

is

of the Zionist dream, a homeland for the Jewish people

where they can be a majority and plan so long as there

Jew

is

a

Law

own destiny;

their

of Return, which grants every

(not Arab) automatic citizenship

upon

request,

precisely in order to assure a Jewish majority

— the Arab

in Israel will never be as equal as the Jew.

will

be the Jewish All

may in

the

grind their teeth, but

accept this fact.

and

“progressives,”

“liberals,”

if

in

always

of the Jew, not the Arab.

state, the state

whatever shape, and

It

they believe in Zionism,

a Jewish

No amount

leftists

state,

they must

of dialectics or sophistry

will make it vanish. A Jewish state means that there is an inherent difference between the Jewish citizen and the Arab one. And why not? If the purpose of moving large numbers of Jews to Israel was not for the purpose of setting up a Jewish state with a permanent Jewish majority, why leave New York City with its two million Jews, or the Soviet Union with its three million? A large Jewish minority is not the answer that Zionism proposed to the question of anti-Semitism. We have had large Jewish minorities in the past and they have availed

us nothing. state. Israel

majority

A

large ghetto

is still

a ghetto, not a Jewish

was conceived as a Jewish state, a Jewish was conceived as the one home of the

state. It

Jewish people just as every nation has

For

majority.

But

this concept, there

is

its

home

with

its

no need to apologize.

does present us with a fact that the “progressive” and the Left always pass over in embarrassment.

That

it

fact

is

that the

Arab

in Israel

may be

a citizen, he

The Chosen Land

may

be given equal opportunities in education and em-

ployment, but he is

43

an Arab

in a

is

doomed

Jewish

to a minority role because he

And from

state.

this flows the

inescapable resentment on the part of any minority,

which

is

compounded by

the Arab’s belief that the state

and that he should be the majority. It is no solution to this problem to seek a resolution of the Arab’s identity crisis. The Arab cannot combine his Arab nationalism with living in a Jewish, not Arab, state. The growing number of educated Israeli Arabs, those entering secondary schools and universities, will never constitute a more moderate and compromising Arab minority. Precisely the opposite. Every example of history shows that revolutionaries come not from the numb, dumb peasant and oppressed classes but from the intellectual middle or upper classes, or the sons of the is

really his,

oppressed classes

who have

escaped into the rarified

atmosphere of the university.

Arab generation is

that

unwilling to accept

first class citizen

protest

and

What

is

its

It

infinitely

is

the new, educated

more dangerous,

that

status as a something less than

and that

will resort to

ever-growing

revolts.

is

more, the growing rootlessness and lack of

Jewish values

among

Israeli

Jewish youth

is

bound

to

lead to a condition, similar to that in the United States

and almost every western country, wherein “majority” intellectuals, driven by their lack of values to a neurotic self-hate and the need to attack the parental and state Establishment, will latch on to the “oppressed” Arab as a means to channel their own destructive impulses. Exactly as in the United States, intellectual Jewish

OUR CHALLENGE youth

will

44

find themselves a cause, the “persecuted”

Arabs, and give them (the Arabs) the thing they most lacked to ship.

A

make

their revolt meaningful: majority leader-

minority can never win against a determined

majority, but

youth and

when

that majority

intellectuals are driven

mistrust of their

What we

divided,

when

its

by doubt, self-hate and

own government,

are ripe for revolt, tension,

is

then the conditions

and anarchy.

will see as the years pass

is

the growth

of educated Arabs whose nationalism will be bitter and

We

extreme.

Arabs whose will

will also see

intellectual

a corresponding growth of

and educational achievements

not find an appropriate occupational outlet, with

many hundreds unable political

society

to find the professional

jobs their ambitions demand.

We

and

will see

a

where most of the laboring jobs are Arab and the

better ones Jewish. This will lead to increasing frustration, tension, boldness, civil disobedience,

demonstra-

and revolt. Growing numbers of young Jews will actively support these Arabs; the Israeli Left, from the Moscow-puppet Rakach party to the schizophrenic Mapam, will aid them politically; and

tions, protests, riots,

there will be created conditions similar to those in the

United States

and which

Once

civil rights

will yet see

again,

revolt— which has only begun

warfare in the

none of

this

is

streets.

strange or bizarre.

There has never been an instance of two peoples, both sizable

and both

fully believing that the land

is

theirs,

which have managed to permanently coexist in that same land. Whether in Northern Ireland, India, Quebec, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, or even Belgium, grave differences

The Chosen Land

45

language have created iron curtains between the groups involved. How much

in nationality, race, religion, or

more so where

in the case of the

Jews and Arabs of

Israel,

the above differences exist against a back-

all

ground of hate and war.

The revolutionary

and

Left, liberals of all kinds,

upon the “plight” of an international hue and cry, to organize worldwide protests and support on behalf of the Arabs. Their efforts will hurt, to an as yet unknown degree, financial support for Israel, both from foreign governments as well as private supporters— including

anti-Semites in general will seize the Arabs to raise

Jews.

These axioms that scenario.

What emerges

Israel faces crisis in

ing

a terrible

the past.

I

intermarriage

phenomenon spells

doom

that

is

have outlined make up a

an unpleasant realization that

crisis that

threatens her as no other

have not even touched upon the growrate

between Jews and Arabs, a

may

not bother “liberals” but that

pogroms

for Jews just as surely as the

take their physical

What

I

is

lives.

the solution? Certainly not to ignore the

problem. Certainly not to persuade ourselves that not exist or that

out to be or that disappear of impossible

that

its

it is

it

not as bad as some people

will get better

own

accord.

or that

Not by

brotherhood hopes

it

it

does

make

it

will eventually

illusions or patently

will

this

problem be

solved. Illusions will not save the Israelis; good, hard

mon

sense

will.

Certainly every effort must be

com-

made

to

increase the Jewish population of Israel through a crisis

OUR CHALLENGE

46

approach to immigration and strenuous efforts to raise the Jewish birth rate. But at least equally as important is the need to find

And

here

we

some way

refer

to reduce the

both to the Arabs

Arab minority.

who

are Israeli

citizens as well as to the inhabitants of the liberated territories.

most humane in the long run, and the safest for the Jews is an effort to separate the Arab minority from the Jewish majority by a planned and well-funded emigration of Arabs from Israel. I speak here of the idea for an urgent creation of an Emigration Fund for Peace (Keren Hegira Imaan haShalom) and I immediately point out that I refer only to a voluntary one, through the free choice and deter-

The

best partial solution, the

mination of individual Arabs. Naturally, the extremist, the proud nationalist will

not leave, but many,

many

other thousands

will. If it

can

be pointed out to the Arabs that Jewish majority rule will never be displaced and that they are being offered an

opportunity that, most to begin

new

that they will leave.

for Greeks

likely, will

lives in the

West

never be theirs again

— the chances are excellent

What population

transfers created

and Turks, Indians and Pakistanis, and

Sudetan Germans, can be repeated

here.

The most important obstacle is, of course, the small but vocal group of rootless and frustrated neo-intellectuals who will be the first to attack the plan and smear it with all kinds of labels. Yet it is up to those who love the Jewish people and state and hope to save them both from a disastrous crisis, to ignore the false prophets of false and ignorant “liberalism” and to make this plan a

The Chosen Land reality. Integration is is

47

not always the answer, although

it

not always not the answer. In this case, an attempt

to integrate the

Arabs of

Israel

can be successful only at and without the will-

the price of a unique Jewish state,

ingness to pay that price futility.

it is

an exercise

Let us then ignore those

who

in

dangerous

are “overly right-

eous.” Let us speak of the need for a private body of

wealthy and influential Jews to establish an emigration

fund with an

initial capitalization

of at least twenty

Such money could be raised with comparative ease if wealthy western Jewry would be quietly but firmly persuaded by the Israeli government that this fund is vital to her interests and welfare. These same people should also begin the task of million dollars.

contacting governments of states that are underpopulated

or in need of

manpower

to see exactly

they are willing to allocate both for interest as well as for the

bomb

that

is

the

how many their own

visas self-

purpose of defusing the time

Arab population of the Land of

Governments should also be

discreetly asked

Israel.

how much

they would be willing to contribute to this fund, which

would do more to solve the Middle East problem than all the United Nations plans yet created.

A careful table should

be drawn up, based on living

conditions in different countries and the size of families, to ascertain

how much should

be allotted to individuals

and families that would wish to emigrate. With a fund of money, with visas, with exact charts, the Arabs and here I stress that this plan would be offered to both the Arabs of pre-1967 Israel and those of the liberated lands would then be approached and

—

—

OUR CHALLENGE offered a sizable

to begin a

new

to emigrate to the country of their choice (within the

life) list

sum (more than enough

48

of states that has agreed to take them

in).

A

number

of Arab countries might agree to take in skilled labor

with

capital;

this

would

certainly

be preferable to

emigration to non-Arab countries.

Jews in the receiving countries should be enlisted to see about jobs and housing for the emigrating Arabs, and schools to teach these Arabs the skills that are needed in the new lands should be funded and set up either in Israel or in the

Will

country of emigration.

many Arabs

leave?

I

believe that,

monetary incentive and promise of a new the eternal threat of hatred will.

Whatever the number,

and minority

if

life

given the free

status,

Israel will benefit

from

many

from even

mind the extraordinarily high birthrate of the Arabs of Israel and that each one who leaves takes with him many future Arabs. It is a plan that is worth trying and that promises blessings for the Jewish state. Above all it is an answer worthy of the most serious thought because of the potential disaster inherent in the lack of an answer. A brief comment on criticism of the plan from

that limited emigration. Bear in

responsible circles, particularly within the government, criticism that

condemns

the plan for “offending” the

Arabs and harming “friendly relations” between them and the Jews. It is difficult to comprehend a cabinet and a ruling party that make such statements, which contain more than a little contradiction. One simply cannot understand those leading government officials who publicly call for the return of parts of the liberated lands

The Chosen Land

49

on the grounds that they do not “want too many Arabs,” and then condemn others for proposing an emigration plan.

Do we

really think that

the Arabs

and make

the world

do we think an

hears

relations difficult? If so,

prime minister,

his

such a plan would offend

Israeli

Arab

finance

feels

what

in

when he

minister,

foreign

and other assorted Laborites talk about the danger of too many Arabs in a Jewish state? Do we really think we make friends and influence people that way? The difference between the advocates and the opponents of the plan is that one group plays games with the Arabs and tries to fool them while the other tells the truth. Labor wants to get rid of the Arabs by giving back Jewish land; we want to try to keep Eretz Yisroel and find some means to convince the Arabs to leave. What of those who will not leave? They will certainly be the majority, so that under any circumstances the resources and brains of the state must be mobilized to increase the numbers of Jews and the proportion of Jews to Arabs, as well as finding some means whereby the Arabs of the territories will not opt for Israeli citizenship. Let us again repeat that there are two problems posed by the Arabs within Eretz Yisroel. One is the fact minister, deputy premier,

of their existence within the borders as a large, potentially

dissident

potential

and

seditious minority.

political

threaten the Jewish

and electorate

hegemony of

The second is their power that could

the Jewish state. Both

problems could be eased by emigration, but even

if

large

numbers choose to remain, the second problem can be met and modified.

still

OUR CHALLENGE

50

Those Arabs who remain within the Land of Israel, both pre-1967 and in the liberated lands, pose a politically demographic threat. The threat must be met not by returning land that is sacred and Jewish and whose return would pose a security threat of catastrophic proportions, but by other means. Certainly, nothing can be done to limit the rights of those Arabs who are already Israeli citizens, or their children. But the Arab population of the liberated lands that should and must be

made

part of Eretz Yisroel can be politically neutralized.

First,

it

should be

made clear that the

incorporation

of the territories into Israel will not bring with

it

auto-

matic citizenship and that the non-Jews there will be treated exactly as

if

they were non-Jews from some

other area coming into Israel. That

is,

that they must

apply for citizenship which will be given to them after the regular five-year wait.

At the end of that time, the applicant must repeat his intention of becoming a citizen and swearing loyalty to the State of Israel. Notice of such intention and declaration will be printed in three Arab newspapers for two consecutive weeks. The intent here is clearly to discourage the Arab from asking for citizenship. At the same time, the government should

make

a

that those

definite

who

offer

to

all

territorial

residents

opt for noncitizenship will be auto-

from national taxes, as well as pushing for a mass program of birth-control education and “liberating” literature for Arab women. All efforts to combine education that will reduce the high Arab birthmatically freed

The Chosen Land

51

government incentives aimed at raising the Jewish birthrate are vital in the demographic war. rate with

In

addition,

conceivable Jewish resource

every

must go into the effort to increase Aliya, Jewish immigration, to mass proportions. This is an absolute necessity not only for the Jews of the Galut themselves, but also for those in Israel. The infusion of two million and more Jews into the state assures us a political majority, whatever the numbers of Arabs. Furthermore, there is an extraordinary difference between the small population we have today and a large Jewish state of five million Jews.

One does not speak

out or dismantling such a not

demand too

maximum

state.

so glibly of wiping

Because of this, one can-

strongly that Israeli efforts toward

Aliya through

all

possible

means be expanded

to the utmost, regardless of the reactions of any group

or government.

On rate,

the one hand, efforts to reduce the

Arab

birth-

population, and political power; on the other,

attempts at raising the number of Jews: both are essential to the creation of a

and

maximum

Jewish state that

from threats of annihilation and from internal efforts at sedition and anarchy. The overall Arab-Israel problem will not be solved will live

thrive, free

for decades. Indeed,

it

may

never be solved. This holds

problem within Israel. For those who ask, “but what will the end be?” the mature answer is that ultimately the Messiah will come and, until then, who knows? Besides, who ever said there must be a solution? Some problems have re-

true also for the Jewish-Arab

OUR CHALLENGE

52

mained unsolved for centuries despite many honest efforts to solve them. What we must not do is allow our impatience and weariness to push us into a false solution that will lead to disaster.

We

much

is

of a real solution as

The Arabs and Jews of

may is

never

live in true

are obligated to find as

possible. Israel

and the Middle East

peace together. Foolish idealism

no substitute for true idealism or even for any kind of

reality.

faith

What

faithless”

the

is

needed

a reaffirmation of the age-old

is

“the destiny of Israel which will not prove

in

and a determined,

realistic policy

most important of all Jewish goals

aimed

at

—Jewish survival.

Let us not be frightened into guilt feelings and into

a retreat from

common

sense, self-preservation,

and our

Jewish destiny by the attacks of the lovers of “peace.”

Those who advocate Jewish self-preservation are just as anxious for peace as the confused and strident shouters on the Left. Their wives and children face the same threat and their Jewish gabardine is just as legitimate as the cloak of the self-proclaimed “peace-seekers.”

The with

difference

reality,

is

that the Jewish nationalist lives

not illusion.

He had

faith in the

Jewish

and the strong Jewish hand that brings the miraculous to reality. He knows that the Almighty and Jewish destiny will not desert the Jew, but he knows that success is conditioned on

destiny, the Almighty’s promise

his

own

realistic

efforts

at

formulating and carrying

and bold Jewish

In the end,

we

will

be fortunate in that, with the

most foolish and myopic of to destroy ourselves

out a

policy.

intentions,

and the Almighty

we will be unable will save us

from

The Chosen Land 53 the fruits of our in

own

folly.

We

have reached that stage

Jewish history and destiny where

the Jewish return to the

maximum, and

glorious.

homeland

No

it

is

will

ordained that be permanent,

assortment of timid, fearful,

undo this. What they can do, amounts of tragedy in the form of human suffering and lost opportunities. They can retard the salvation and make us pay heavily. In the end,

and

tiny politicians can

however,

is

cost us great

however, the redemption

will out, for this

mination of divine providence.

is

the deter-

3 The Chosen People: Questions was a week after the revelation that a number of young Jews had been arrested and accused of being part of a Syrian spy ring. The news that a number of young Jews, sabras, and one from a kibbutz, were accused of acting It

against the Jewish state for ideological reasons, led the

Prime Minister of Israel to say: “I was surprised. A week ago I would have sworn that such a thing could not happen.”

There were others, too, who were surprised,

in fact

The Chosen People: Questions

55

astounded. But they were astounded at the surprise of

much lack of awarehappening today among the golden youth,

the Prime Minister that indicated so ness at

what

is

the noar zahav. We wallow scale Israeli

in

our

illusions.

youth rebellion,” we say, “as there

West, against Jewish

Jews are

“There can be no large-

all

ties,

against

one people whose Jewishness takes prece-

dence even over

‘Israeli-ness.’

There can be no quarrel

with the argument that the destiny of each in that indivisible,

of

all

Jews

in the

is

the concept that

is

Jew

is

with-

world Jewish framework, that the fate

the fate

and obligation of the

Israeli.

There

can be no rejection of Zionism, the belief in one, divisible

in-

Jewish people and the destiny of the Jew

perceived as within this context of people and land. There

can be no mass

flirting

with a Left that rejects national-

ism for class struggle and a universal world that buries

Judaism as both a

faith

and people. There can be no

massive crime, violence, and drug problem; there can be

no mass

retreat

from moral standards; there can be no

hedonistic search for individual pleasure; there can be

no rejection of ‘parochialism,’ of nationalism and Jewishness, and no preaching of the brotherhood of all revolutionaries (including Palestinians) against imperial-

ism

— including

Zionism. There can be no ‘progressive’

wrong with intermarriage, and if we see a few disturbing have no fear they will go away as

thinking that will see nothing for ours are golden youth,

spots here and there,

soon as there noar zahav. ”

is

—

a war with the Arabs. Ours, after

all,

are

But of course we deceive ourselves, just as Jews

OUR CHALLENGE

56

humans) always do when they prefer not to think about unpleasant things and a thousand times more so when the unpleasantness hovers about a subject very dear to them. We delude ourselves and pooh-pooh those who warn us. It can’t happen here! That which afflicted modern, western Jewish youth everywhere else in the world cannot happen here! We Israelis, who so superciliously mock the American Jew for parroting these words and not learning from the physical lesson of Germany, merrily repeat the same foolishness in reference to the spiritual and national disaster that faces our (or perhaps all

people, in the de-Judaization of Israeli youth.

most serious problem facing the Jewish

far, the

far

It is,

more

by

state,

serious than Arabs, or borders, or economics.

Of course it can happen here, and indeed it is happening. Too many parents, teachers, comfortable businessmen, and old-time Zionist ideologists who created this youth neither know what is going on nor want to know. It is so much more pleasant and reassuring not to look too deeply into the warnings of the “eternal pessimists”

— particularly

if

they have not been in the

country for forty years, are not part of the flower”

set,

are only “newcomers”

Israeli

who should

“May-

live

here

for twenty years before venturing an opinion.

Not so very long ago in the United States there was also a noar zahav; do not think that the madness of drugs, infantile campus Leftism, anarchy of values, and irrational attacks on the state were always part of the American scene. As one who was born in the United States, one who lived there, studied there, was part of it, and saw it change, I can testify to what once was.

The Chosen People: Questions

What once was

57

—and barely ten years ago at that — was

a youth exactly as apathetic as Israeli youth; that hardly

dreamed of questioning their loyalty to and com in their country and government; to whom the idea of cursing the president was obscenely foreign; to whom the flag was a thing before which one stood reverently and pledged allegiance; to whom the army was the staunch defender, not only of their own lives and safety, but of freedom and liberty throughout the world; to whom communism was an evil to be devoutly fought; to whom drugs and license were things one read of but never remotely practiced. In short, an American world of quiet, patriotic, conservative, and

ever

fidence

apathetic youth.

Within a decade that world turned upside down, before the startled eyes of parents, educators, and fortable citizens

who

com-

stared in bewilderment at the wild

and stammered the eternal question: “Where did we go wrong?” The answers would fill volumes, but we can touch upon one of them. America went wrong when it ignored and underestimated the power of the first small groups of revolutionaries (whether political or social) to win the minds of vast numbers of their peers, who had been given an American life devoid of real values. America which measures everything in terms of numbers laughed at the tiny Left that began to preach its creed on campuses and in schools. “How many members have they got?” may be the last words that the silent majority will be able to express in freedom. America went wrong revolution

when

it

forgot that the physical law that nature abhors a

OUR CHALLENGE

58

vacuum, that something must fill it, finds its application in the life of man also. America saw the rise of the cults and leftists and refused to meet the challenge by setting up ideas and groups to move in and fill the ideological and moral vacuum. Something else did. For the American Jew, there was not only a loss of a child as far as American values were concerned. With the second American revolution went, too, the Judaism he had bequeathed to that child. The Judaism of his temple and his UJA and his Bar Mitzvah and his lox and his Miami Beach and his B’nai B’rith also went the

way

of the old as his child nonchalantly cast off

Judaism that

all

had so carefully diluted and “modernized.” That which his father had

vestiges of the

his parents

bankrupted the son cheerfully jettisoned.

And

American Jewish tragedy began with conditions very similar to those today in Israel. For one who was there, events here are the repetition of a bad the

dream, once escaped. Here, too, schools, “better” neighborhoods,

in the “better” high

and

in the universities,

more sensitive, more consciously conmore restive youth are coming to grips with the irrelevance and boredom of their lives. Here, too, growing numbers of frustrated, embittered, and rebellious writers, intellectuals, and professors are beginning to play the role of spokesmen for the “oppressed” and to poison the minds of naive and impressionable students and followers. Here, too, freedom and growing affluence have created a dissatisfied and searching youth that rejects the vapid values of parents and society and that

small groups of fused,

despises both for their lack of guidance.

Here, too.

The Chosen People: Questions small groups of extremists spring ing worlds of ideas and spiritual

new

up and promise

“religions” that can

59

excit-

the

fill

emptiness in a youth whose parents exchanged

Judaism for a material pottage of lentils. Here, too, we see the first budding of the attempts to flee from unpleasant and difficult reality through sex and drugs.

their

And

here, too,

we

tentative assaults

above the

see the first— but hardly the

on

all

last-

the sacred cows that were once

slightest criticism:

Zionism, the army, and the

state itself.

So

let

us here, in Israel, avoid the blindness of those

in the Exile. Let us realize that

if

Marxist Matzpen movement;

if

preach that there are too that

we must

cast adrift

many

is

an anti-Zionist,

there are groups that

links with the past

and

our Jewishness for a kind of

“Israeli-ness” that will find

its

the nations of the Middle East; tell

there

acceptable niche within if

there are groups that

our youth that we have stolen the land, and oppres-

if there are people who call Ashkenazim the deadly enemies of the Sephardim; if

sed the Palestinians;

there are students

who

Holocaust and the

are “sick of hearing about” the

shtetl;

and

if

there are those

who

want to speak about a Jewish nationalism without a religion (consider the “Jewish nationalist of the Christian faith”)

and others who wish to

Jewish nationality at Jew; we are

young

Israelis”)

Israeli

fected with

it.

all

reject the

(“Let the Galut

— then there

is

concept of a

Jew remain a

a danger, and more

Jews than we care to think about are inAnd let us not astonish the world by state-

ments of astonishment at the disclosure of the existence of Jewish spies. Let us recognize that the problem of

OUR CHALLENGE

60

Jewish youth and their values— or lack of values— is the

most urgent one facing us today and that the solution of all our other problems depends on whether we solve it or not. There is a disease afflicting our youth today and

we must remedy it. The origin of the disease stand. The Israeli youth, like

who he is.

not sure

All the

not difficult to under-

is

his

Galut counterpart,

is

Zionism and Jewish national-

ism that was going to make him a new, proud, free Jew,

dreams of the Brenners and Berdechevskis and Ben Gurions, have a flat taste of ashes today. The sabra

all

the

(native-born Israeli) does not possess the nostalgia for

Judaism that made David Ben Gurion the Zionist Jew he is (whether the Old Man cares to admit it or not; whether he cares to consider that his the Galut with

its

philosophy that retains the Jewish national quality really only a

is

product of environmental nostalgia.) The

sabra never knew the Galut, never had the anti-Semite give

him a beating and a negative reason

Jew.

He looks

come

at the “foreign” Jews, his brothers,

who

to visit his land with their strange languages

and

different

asking,

way

for being a

of

habits.

He

“What am all

scratches his

I?”

“antiquities”

new Jewish head,

His religion long since went the

and

in this

he was encouraged by

the teaching and examples of his elders. But the tragedy

of the loss of Torah and tradition does not end only with the absolute loss of truth that the

The tragedy

is

compounded by

secularist nationalists

nationalism could be intact.

who

Their error

asks,

“Who am

Torah

represents.

the massive error of the

who thought that their pure Jewish handed down to the next generation

is

1?

glaringly revealed in the sabra

What am

I?”

The Chosen People: Questions It is

61

a question asked by millions both in Israel and

some hundred and fifty years ago, the Jews of the world knew exactly what they were, and more important, why they were. It was this that allowed them to preserve both their sanity and existence in a mad, cruel world that sucked their blood and sought in the Galut.

Until

their extinction.

stands

its

A

nation

framework,

its

for existence will be

grips with find

his

life.

— or

individual

— that

purpose on earth, and

its

underreason

normal and prepared to come to has roots and direction will

One who

place in this world and

march purposefully

forward with a clear mind and an understanding heart. But a

man

or a people that has no goal or for

whom

in being is unclear and filled with doubt, whose becomes a tortuous nightmare of searching ever more desperately and irrationally for elusive answers, is doomed to a life of failure, frustration, and waste. The Jew of ancient and medieval times may have been a man who suffered greatly and for whom life was a series of agonizing persecutions, pogroms, and poverty, but he knew who he was, from whence he came, and where he was going, and it was this that gave him strength to continue and the sure knowledge that eventual victory would be his. What did the Jew know? What was his reason for being? How did he define himself and his place within the framework of existence? There was nothing puzzling or new in this definition. It was one that was quite old exactly as old as the Revelation

purpose life

—

at Sinai:

The Jew knew

that he

was a member of a unique

and separate people, divinely chosen

at

Sinai as a

religio-nation, transcending the foolishness

and dangers

OUR CHALLENGE

62

of shallow secular nationalism that merely divides with-

out raising up.

He knew

G-d had chosen the Jewish

that

people to learn, uphold, and teach to his children the divine

wisdom

of Torah, and that the divine destiny of

the Jewish people exclusiveness,

to

was to

realize

its

greatness and

its

remain separate from the nations

and lose its divine uniqueness, and to return to the homeland of Eretz Yisroel, there to rebuild an independent, truly Jewish state that would be a model society for mankind. lest

it

assimilate

In this definition there

were no agonizing questions

over whether the Jews were a nation or religion; over the relationship between one less

of their citizenship; over

relationship

Jew and another,

who was

between Jew and

salism, assimilation,

regard-

a Jew; over the

gentile;

over univer-

Reform, Diaspora nationalism, or

socialist class struggle. All

Jews were brothers and part

of one religio-nation. Religion and nation constituted one

and there was no Jew who was not simultaneously part of the same religion and nation. Above all, there was a common Jewish destiny, and the gentile, with his separate ways and denial of Judaism, was separate and apart from it. With the coming of the Emancipation and the literal and figurative collapse of the ghetto, the definition changed. It changed because numbers of Jews who sensed material opportunities and saw the dim light of

entity,

freedom and equality

in the society of nations

under-

stood (and quite correctly) that with such a Jewish definition as their fathers

and ancestors had

carried,

assimilation and integration into the gentile world

was

The Chosen People: Questions

63

And so, lubricated by the desire for integrathe Mendelssohns and Friedlanders assimilation, and tion and Furtados and Riessers cast away the first part of the mighty, ancient definitions of Jew: The Jew was no longer a member of a nation: he no longer longed for a Zion in the Middle East. Here was Zion (and “here” impossible.

was Hamburg or Paris or Amsterdam or London or Charleston, South Carolina). The dream of freedom and equal opportunity broke clusiveness of the Jew,

down

the definition of the ex-

and the broken definition hasten-

ed immeasurably the spiritual destruction of the

German

or French or what-have-you of “Mosaic persuasion.” Religion was the next Jewish sacrifice on the altar

of assimilation. Reform Judaism emasculated the religion as, in its zeal to assure the total

nation,

in Eretz Yisroel or to a

denied

it

death of the Jews as a

eliminated every reference to a return to Zion

it

was

al aspects

in.

And

of Judaism

redemption from a Galut that

it

along with the death of the nation-

came

the inevitable changes that

more acceptable to the Christian. The mortal inferiority complex that plagued the Jews of the Emancipation; the morbid self-hatred that produced mass flights to baptism on the part of people like Mendelssohn’s daughter Dorothea, Rahel Levin, and

made

it

Heinrich Heine, also drove emancipated Jewry to pro-

duce “temples” and a religion close enough to Christianity to

avoid invidious comparison. Not only was Zion

amputated from the Jewish articles

articles of faith,

but the

themselves received a thorough emasculation.

Some, indeed, may have acted from higher motives, but the inescapable fact is that the change from syna-

OUR CHALLENGE

64

gogue to temple, from traditional services to organs, ministerial robes, mixed pews, women in minyans, and the like

was due to the drive It

to be “like unto the goyim.”

goes without saying that the emasculation could

not have taken place without the denial of the

ha-ymini

the right-hand

,

pillar

amud

upon which Judaism

always stood and which was correctly understood as being the sole logical and rational support for exclusive

The sweeping changes made by the men of the Emancipation and Enlightenment could have come about only if the Judaism they amputated was also merely a product of men. A Judaism that was G-d given and divinely handed down, a Judaism based upon the Revelation of the Almighty to his people was not a thing

existence.

even

that

great

the

men And

of the nineteenth-century

West could trifle with. so Revelation as a doctrine in Judaism was quietly and respectfully buried. To be sure, most of the reformers could not screw up their courage to say so unequivocably (in their denial of G-d they were not quite able to be men). Such reformers played with a Revelation that was not quite that; with a

G-d who one

else

(in

some mysterious way

neither they nor any-

could ever explain) reveals himself constantly

to all reformers; with a religion that finite

was divine

in its

humanness.

Of course, such theological fraud could be accepted by those who created it for their own peace of mind, but

could

never

lectual honesty

stand

and anger

the

slightest

test

of

— such as displayed in our time

by the young, who see through such nonsense with difficulty.

Little

wonder

intel-

little

that neither the nineteenth-

— 65

The Chosen People: Questions

much more

century Reform pilpul ( so

tortuous than the

yeshiva brand the modernists gleefully mocked) or the incredible religious permutations of our time (G-d as the

“power that makes for salvation,” G-d as a “functional concept”) left new generations either cold or contemptuous. Judaism without Revelation, without a special,

unique reason for Jewish teachings and religion, its

left

adherents without a special, unique reason for cleav-

ing to particularism, for being a Jew. All the further

agonizing and desperate answers in its ethical

monotheism and

serve only to raise millions of

Their owners

know

— that Judaism

its call

Third World types, ethical culturists, and uncircumcized

Marxists,

all

kinds of

and temple rabbi and

“peace”

shout

people

quite as loudly as the local

unique

young Jewish eyebrows.

Christian rebels,

that

is

for social justice

“ethics”

Socialist-

Zionist Histadrut boss. Ethical

monotheism?

Brotherhood?

Is

being Jewish?

If

that

that

all

Social

there

is all

is? Is

there

is,

Peace?

justice?

that

then

all

let

there

is

to

us rather be

humans, part of that great universal brotherhood of men who ignore foolish and dangerous artificial divisions such as nationalism

centrate

and

religion,

and con-

on building one happy world. This is the salvation

of humanity and the Jew; this

is

the solution to the

“Jewish problem.” Indeed, this

is

precisely the path that the assimila-

tionists took. Heine, in his early escape

and

faith,

our day? tion

could exult: It is

“And what

is

from

his

people

the great task of

emancipation. Not simply the emancipa-

of the Irish, the Greeks, Frankfort Jews, West

OUR CHALLENGE Indian blacks and

all

66

such oppressed peoples, but the

emancipation of the whole world.

.

.

Heine’s words were echoed by an American Jewish intellectual

more than a hundred years

later:

“A Jew

moral obligations not by becoming especially involved in ‘the Jewish community’ but by

can best

fill

his

.

.

.

community of radical political action. For the commitment to broaden the contours of human freedom and justice must take precedence over everything else; to me, the Jewish tradition has no meaning except when it is incident to that greater tradition.” Painful words for the “good” Jew to hear? No doubt, but inexorably logical and following from the death of

joining the

.

Judaism as a unique

faith with a clear reason for

.

.

a

separate existence.

How pitiful the efforts by the Reformers then —and now —to find some kind of Jewish raison d’etre! How sad their attempt to palely resurrect the once bold and

Chosen People. From an uncomplicated concept of a special, separate, and unique nation, the enlightened now had to resort to all manner of sophistry and sophistication. We are now chosen to wander among the goyim (rather than build our own state), and raise them up to our level (and one can imagine how the poor goyim simply fell all over themselves with

unashamed

tradition of a

delight at being told this).

We were chosen to reform their

institutions (through Liberalism?

ism?)

and

their

enjoy strangers

ideas.

— who

How

mean to their way of

really

coming to them to change

Marxism? Rational-

the indigenous natives benefit life!

them

The Chosen People: Questions Little

wonder

that

another natural progeny

this

67

emasculation begat yet

— socialism.

When

the stun-

ning and breathtaking cry to the workers of the world to unite shattered the oppressive heavens of Eastern

Europe,

is it

any wonder that a people who had been

subjected to the Emancipation’s trumpeting of self-hate

responded?

the Russian-Jewish newspaper Razvet

If

began to batter down traditional Jewish life by stating that “our motherland is Russia. And just as her air is ours, so too, must her language be ours”; and if the maskilim heaped dung upon Judaism and Jewry; if

Gordon could

man

tell

in the street”

his people to

“be a Jew at

home and a

—then surely the answer of the young

Jew upon being told that “Jew” and “man” were mutually exclusive, was to choose to be a “man” both in the street and at home. And if Levanda could write in his childish novel:

Russians will us. all

“My

come

heart

tells

to love us.

How? By our own

me

We

that in time the

will

make them

the “withered leaves” (to quote Lilienblum)

“absurdities” (Gordon)

prepared to do

love

love,” then the throwing off of

and the

was a thing that the youth was

— in a more direct and more honest manner

then the maskilim dared contemplate.

Kremer and Medem’s Bund or the “general” kind that saw enough Jews flock to the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks to make minyanim (quorums) at every committee meeting, was yet another logical outcome of the death Socialism, whether the “Jewish” kind of

of the uniqueness of the Jew, of the shattering of his

nationalism and the emasculation of his religion.

What is

OUR CHALLENGE

May Day

so inexplicable about the words of a Jewish

orator in the halcyon year of 1892: all

for

68

“We Jews

repudiate

our national holidays and fantasies which are useless

human

society.

We

of Socialism and adopt their holidays.

Nothing inexplicable. logical than the

up with armies

link ourselves

Certainly

.

.

it

.” is

far

Sabbaths and holidays of the Jew

more in his

Reform or Conservative temple, when the Torah scroll is raised and all shout: “And this is the Torah that Moses set before the Children of Israel, by word of G-d through Moses,” while steadfastly “knowing” that every word is a

lie.

And

then came secular Zionism: Jewish national-

ism whose purpose was to create a “normal” people all

like

others, to save the Jew.

The Zionist fathers of the nation have eaten the sour grapes of secular nationalism and their sabra children’s ideological teeth are set on edge. Zionism as a warm, Jewish nationalism, a success? Of course Zionism could capture the hearts and minds of the already warm Galut Jew of Eastern Europe, the one whose Israeli grandson would later be ashamed of him. He whose Jewishness flowed from the ancient, traditional totality of Judaism quivered prayer,

with

excitement

as

the

“And may our eyes behold

mercy,” teetered on the edge of

three-times-daily

thy return to Zion in

reality.

And

it

mattered

had wandered away from Judaism, for the

little

that he

faith

had stamped its indelible impression on

his nostalgic

soul.

The Jew who had been warmed by the Sabbath who had slept with Maimonides’

candles, the Yemenite

The Chosen People: Questions

of centuries of Muslim fanaticism,

epistle in the face

the countless Jews for

firmation of

—

all

whom

the Galut

was a

daily af-

of the Bible’s dire predictions of disaster

hungered for

all

69

relief

from the goy and

his land.

For

such people, Zionism was a simple thing; they neither

understood nor were concerned over the ramifications of a secular nationalism or Saul Tchernichowski’s pagan yearnings or Ber Borochov’s meanderings about a return to Zion so as to prepare for the class struggle or

Jacob

Klatzkin’s obsession with “redeeming the basis of our

who had heard of the and who groaned in Lomzhe or

being from spirituality.” The Jew

Theodor Herzl, Minsk or Sa’ana, thought of Zion as a place where he

great

could continue to light his candles, say his Psalms,

marry

off his daughters to nice Jewish boys, or simply

live like

a

man — all

of the cursed goyim

And

in a land that

who made

was miraculously

his life

such a

free

hell.

of course, Zionism could deeply affect a certain

number of enlightened Jews. Herzl and Leon Pinsker were born in the Exile and their

illusions

were shattered,

dreams destroyed, their souls shaken to They knew from their own personal experiences there was no salvation among the gentiles, and

their fondest

the core. that

Pinsker could gloomily declare to an advocate of assimila-

was also a visionary, an idealist, a member of that church which raised the ideals of equality and brotherhood to the highest level. ... we hoped to be appreciated for our deeds, and what is our reward?’ And Herzl could watch cultured France go mad in an anti-Semitic Dreyfusian orgy and, shattered, write: “The fact of the matter is, everything tends to one and

tion: “I

OUR CHALLENGE

70

same conclusion, which is expressed in the classic Berlin cry: Juden raus.r Certainly men like these who had tasted the bitter fruits of illusory freedom could be moved to a revulsion against the old dream of assimilation and an embracing of Zionism as an escape from the world they had experienced and knew to be a menace for the Jew. It is not strange that many such Jews should throw away the illusion of universalism and embrace total and exclusive Jewish nationalism. For although it was secular and although it was totally negative merely fleeing from exile’s pain it was enough for the Jew faced with that pain.

the

—

—

But even among the secular Zionists, there were those

who understood

the intellectual

dilemma of a

Jewish nationalism that was no longer divinely special, but was merely an escape from persecution

—a “no choice

but.” They could not simply accept a Jewish state that was forced upon them by the goy. They needed some-

thing more, something positive that they could direct,

upon them by circumstances and the outside world. And so we had an Ahad Ha-am who would resort to all manner of artificial contrivances rather than have imposed

why Jews

to explain

are “different” and “special” and

“chosen” (a theory that, shorn of

its

becomes narrowly

and absurdly

at worst),

who

foolish at best,

divine elements, racist

created the concept of “natural national-

ism,” the survival of the Jews because of their “natural

national will to survive”

prove

why

—and

their mystical urge

then never bothered to

was justified. Or Martin

Buber, attempting to find a logical reason for the affirmative continuation of a separate Jewish people in

The Chosen People: Questions

71

and ending up by sinking

into

the face of nondivine

life,

a muddled mysticism of the “blood continuum of the

an

people,”

mystery uniting the

creative

irrational,

generations, concepts that were sure to find adherents

among

those

who assumed

that precisely because they

could not understand them, the theories must be deep

and perceptive. Or the

Socialists

who added

their

own

more something more to

peculiar thinking (whether Borochovian or the diluted Syrkinian) in order to give

—

and frustrating secular nationalism that if the goy would have only allowed—they would have not needed and would have avoided on their direct route toward

a

sterile

proletarian universalism.

none of these. He has not tasted the meaning of the Galut and not despaired of the goy, and so he is not driven by the fears and depression of Herzl. He does not remember the persecution and isolation of the Jew in the ghetto and the embracing of a warm Judaism that, alone, made him a meaningful and self-respecting figure. He is not a fiddler on the roof. He has no warm memories of a Jewish childhood and all the nostalgic guilt feelings that were engendered But the sabra

in those

who

is

are afraid to cast off

all their

has no need to invent positive but

Judaism. He

artificial

reasons for

Jewish nationalism and the Return to Zion, because he was born there.

He

has no need to add to his

secular nationalism because

it

is

as natural to

him as

being an Englishman or a Frenchman.

And Israelis

to

its

precisely

because of

this,

more and more

begin to carry their secular “normal” nationalism

logical conclusion.

They

divest

it

totally of

any

OUR CHALLENGE spark of specialness and

more and more an ness carries with

it

move

72

to a Jewishness that

is

For even secular Jewishtoo much of an artificially contrived

Israeli-ness.

and abnormal nationalism. It implies one Jewish nation and a special and uncomfortably “racist” character about its Jewish members, most of whom live outside the sabra’s land. What an abnormal and unnecessary problem! Being an Israeli, being normal, means divesting oneself of all this special Jewishness. For why be Jewish? This is the question, and unlike his Galut cousin (the relationship has been reduced to that degree) he

plagued (and helped) by goyim

who

give

him

is

not

answer

his

by declaring: “Because we say you are” or by a minority status

makes him

that

majority about him. nation that

is

different

Why

from the sovereign if that means a

be Jewish

extraterritorial,

complex, anachronistic

religious ethnocentricity; with a religion that

its

odious and grating on one’s freedom to be free;

is

in

so

whose

some shtetl “new” Jew never saw and could care

secular priests are always babbling about in

Poland that the

less

about; whose exclusiveness, codified in the

Return and so

in a

patently

Zionism of a Jewish majority

chauvinistic,

if

Law

of

state, is

not “racist”; whose ex-

contributes so much to Arab hostility. Ahavat Yisroel love of Jewry the concept that binds Jews all over the world into one warm and loving unit, that creates a Jewish people no matter where it exists, that is “the separation between Jewry and the nations” becomes at best anachronistic and at worst racist and

clusiveness

—

—

dangerous the moment the Jew loses raison d’etre.

And

here

is

his

religious

the heart of the problem.

The Chosen People: Questions

73

To many thousands of young sabras (some consciously and many others much more vaguely) there is a rejection of the Zionism of founding fathers who cherished an illusion.

The

divest Jewishness of

its

Revelation, of

was that they could

illusion

divine origin, of

religious chosenness,

its

its

and

Sinaitic

still

raise

new Jew who would be proud of his Jewishness, who would look upon all Jews as part of one people, and who

a

would proudly

More than

identity.

such

retain

thoughts,

for

his

exclusiveness and separate

a few sabras react in

those

who

never have

Kasrilivka or would not have created there, it

amazement lived

at in

had they been are incapable of understanding what it is and what it

implies.

Instead

we

see the sabra

who

finds

it

increasingly

easy to “relate” to the Israeli Arab in his class at the university. Israeli,

We

see the sabra

We

not a Jew.

who

speaks of himself as an

see the sabra

exceedingly difficult in the land that tional nostalgia

—

is

is

— aside from emo-

make

his fortune.

Klatzkin and Joseph Brenner in the

sense that he has totally divested Jewishness of

its

character and

them

“we, the

spirit, in

that he can say with

new Jews, have nothing

and can speak with them as “the Hebrews.” But he is more than

special

that

do with Judaism,” last Jews or the first that. He is moving

to

determinedly to the step that even those Zionist

nihilists

and de-Judaizing of the “non-Arab” who lives in Israel. Not only is

never took, himself,

life

not particularly special in any way,

goes off to Australia or Canada to

The Sabra

who, finding

Jewishness

the de-Zionization

now

“cleansed” of Judaism, but for the

OUR CHALLENGE descendant of the Jew has

come

make

to

who

in the

Land, the time

a clean break with Jewishness as well.

Because, at bottom, there

nationalism

chauvinistic

now

is

74

no reason

is

that

binds

to cleave to a

Jews

together

through an antiquated religious or national creed while setting

up

barriers of hostility between Israelis of dif-

ferent creeds

—Jews and Arabs.

Not only

is

the Jewish religion rejected but also the

Jewish nation, as not relevant to the new nationality

“Hebrew” or “Canaanite.” So while most have reached the point where they declare: “First I am Israeli, and only then a Jew,” others have gone further and eliminated any order of priorities. It is only Israel that has national meaning and not Jewishness. Let us be honest with ourselves and cease pointing to the prowess of Israeli youth in the army as proof of “Israeli” or

their loyal Jewishness. Certainly, there are ists,

but for the vast majority

Jewishness.

It is

it

many

ideal-

has nothing to do with

the very normal, very universal reaction

of a people faced with the threat of extermination. is

It

not their sense of Jewish historic destiny and people-

hood, but the knowledge that they the sea

and that

their personal lives

stake, that drives

them

to

be thrown into and fortunes are at

will

conquer mountains.

It is

the

defense of country that motivates, not the concept of

Jewish people and historical destiny.

And

let

us note here something of major importance.

The majority of at least a

Israelis

who

proclaim a desire to return

portion of the lands liberated in 1967 are

motivated by honest, though ill-advised, motives of peace.

But there are others

who

are different.

in this

camp, mostly younger

Israelis,

The Chosen People: Questions

For more and more of these young

“Why

75

Israelis to ask:

should we not return the lands or

why should

Arabs not be allowed to return?” is not merely compromise for the sake of peace. It represents loss of understanding and rejection of this land as the Jewish Land of Israel in its entirety.

This philosophical point of departure

stems from the feeling that the time has

come

to

com-

promise the “chauvinistic” feeling of exclusiveness of land because the time has also come to reject the of people The young Israeli to the land is not only one of pragmatic compromise but one of ideology He is prepared to share his land with Arabs because he sees no great reason for not sharing with the Arabs his peoplehood. The concept of a Chosen Land has become irrelevant and meaningless to many an Israeli and this is only a barometer of his feelings about a Chosen

“racist”

concept

of

exclusiveness

.

attitude of this kind of

.

People. It is

not enough for the frustrated, elderly Zionist

Fathers of the Nation to complain about the lessening of

Zionism and Jewish identity among the young Israelis. Golda Meir’s exhortation to American Jews to teach their children

Jewishness

Hebrew so

echoes

that they will not lose their

hollowly

among thousands

Hebrew-speaking sabras who couldn’t care their Jewishness (including

less

of

about

many who are actively work-

ing to de-Zionize Mrs. Meir’s Jewish State

and on behalf

of the oppressed “Palestinians”). Ben Gurion’s glorifying of the ancient Israelite, Joshua, brings only bored

yawns from most students and angry comments from others about the barbaric practices of the conqueror

of Canaan.

Secular Jewish nationalism, like

all

the

OUR CHALLENGE modern Jewish streams

that attempted to dilute

Judaism

exclusive, revealed divine character, ends

of

its

an

intellectual

and very

real

76

up

in

dead end for the confused

Jew of our day. Again, at bottom, what plagues the young Jews (and

many more

both

in the

adults

Galut and

who

care to so admit publicly)

in Israel,

who have

of divine election and uniqueness,

Why

be a Jew?

And

is

lost their sense

the simple question:

the one responds by

becoming an

American while the other turns into an Israeli, with numbers of both declaring: Let us rather be

increasing

human

beings.

For

Israel,

the

practical

consequences of such

thinking are clear:

Increasing indifference to Jewish

problems outside of

Israel

to Jewish immigration

along with growing

from the Galut; the

hostility

striking

down

Arabs and and assimilation (particularly on the part of the many Sephardic and “progressive” Jewish girls who showed similar modernism by leaping into black beds in the United States); demands that Arab fears of Jewish “expansion” be met by amending or abolishing— the Law of Return; marching, demonstrating, and violently protesting on behalf of the “oppressed” Israeli Arabs who are second-class citizens, and turning

of

all social

barriers to intercourse with the

increasing intermarriage

—

the country into a replica of so

countries

where

restless

and

many

other western

nonidentifying

youth

sought victims of oppression they could “defend” with all

and upheaval; demanding recognition of the “Palestinian” nation and state at the price of Jewish land and Jewish security; increasing calls for

the resultant anarchy

The Chosen People: Questions de-Zionization of Israel and

Middle East

sectarian

state;

77

evolution into a non-

its

escalating emigration to

western countries where there are no

Arab

threats of

much more money

to be

made

extermination and

why

stay in an Israel with

when

countries

it is

no

(for

more problems than other

different

from other countries?);

decreasing immigration from advanced, western countries (for

why

give up the materially

a country that

is

good

life

the same, only poorer?);

more alienation from any kind of

to

come

to

more and

religious practice with

tentative efforts to introduce the dishonest quasi-J udaism

of the West, and the introduction of

divorce that will irrevocably

civil

split the

marriage and

nation into two

separate camps; a disastrous rise in violence and crime as

religious

sanction

disappears;

escalation

of

non-

Jewish moral and cultural values that destroy the discipline

and

sacrifice of

Jewishness and Zionism; increas-

ing materialism, with envy

and jealousy of “haves” on

the part of “have nots” that can lead to a socio-economic

war of brothers and a corresponding lack of social justice and compulsion on the part of the greedy rich. Those who must be squarely blamed for the creation of a youth with ever-lessening Jewish identity

and who will force Israel into political moves that will endanger her very existence, are the ones who have allowed the school curriculum, the communications media, and the general national atmosphere to

bland

(at

best),

reflect a

and even a negative attitude toward

proud, specific Jewish nationalism. The schools of Israel

do not aim at creating warm, proud, deeply nationalistic views. They are western not Jewish schools. They aim ,

OUR CHALLENGE

78

an educated and professional man, not a deeply knowledgeable and intense Jew. They are massive failures in Jewish education and we will pay a

at putting out

terrible price for their failures.

Not only is the Jewish youngster not exposed to much-needed long and intense hours of nationalist indoctrination, so that his knowledge of the Jewish freedom fighters of our times the Irgun, Lechi (Sternists) and Haganah in Israel and the partisan fighters in the Exile is weak and shallow, thus creating the impression of an “imperialist,” nonrevolutionary state. Not only is no total effort made to teach him about the present life of the Jew, his brother, in the Galut so as to tie the two together with deep and intense bonds. Not only is the intense hatred for the Jew by the gentile not deeply impressed on the young Jew’s brow along with the

—

—

universal lesson that Jew-hatred

is

a halakha

l

dorot

(an eternal law), thus saving us future adventures in

Jewish

illusions.

There

is

a greater failure, the failure to understand

that unless the

young Jewish

child in Israel

is

deeply

impressed with the exclusiveness of the Jewish people

and the divine

election of Israel he will see

no reason

and no reason to that leads only to war and

to be Jewish religiously or nationally

have a Zionist, Jewish state

He will see no reason to perpetuate a Zionist and Jewish-majority consciousness that is “logically” racist and chauvinist. He will see no great reason for close and warm ties with Jews overseas. He will see no reason to oppose intermarriage and assimilation and to set up barriers between Jew and Arab. What I am saying is that we run the risk of having large numbers of tension.

The Chosen People: Questions

79

our youth take the ultimate step: from throwing off religion, to casting away Jewish nationalism for “Israeliness,” to opposition to riers to

will

Israeli state that creates bar-

peace with the Arabs.

Unless the Jew

we

an

is

special, chosen,

and

different

continue to have results such as those revealed

in the careful

of Israeli

and

brilliant

study

made

of the attitudes

high school children by Professor

Simon

Herman. That survey showed a shocking lack of interest in and a deep negativism concerning Jewish values. Thus, in response to the question, “Does the fact that you are Jewish play an important part in your life?” some 25 percent replied that it was of little importance, while no fewer than 7 percent said none. “If you were to be born again would you wish to be born a Jew?” brought a response by fully 28 percent

was a matter of indifference to them, with 2 percent flatly admitting that they would not. When the same question was posed as, “If you were to live outside of Israel, would you wish to be born a Jew?” a

that

it

staggering 21 percent said no, with 25 percent saying

made no difference to them. The negativists become a when one eliminates the many Orthodox students who took part in the survey -all of whom responded affirmatively. One need hardly add that on the

it

majority

question of personal intermarriage 27 percent declared that they It

is

would marry a non-Jew

if

the occasion arose.

important to quote Professor Herman’s gloomy

conclusion: “Significant

differences

consistently

appear

on

Jewish-identity items between religious, traditionalist.

OUR CHALLENGE and nonreligious religious student ditionalist

students.

much

is

religious student.

all

identity of the

stronger than that of the tra-

and nonreligious student; the Jewish

of the traditionalist

feel

The Jewish

.

.

is

identity

stronger than that of the non-

Not only do

.

80

more Jewish and value

the religious students

their Jewishness

circumstances, but they feel closer

to,

more under and have a

greater identification with, Jews everywhere.” Bear in

mind

was taken in 1964; since then the identity problem has grown significantly worse. It may be most unpleasant for some but at least that this survey

honest to recognize that unless Judaism the schools (and by this class that futile

is

1

do not mean

brought into

is

the bland Bible

taught by disbelievers as an exercise in

hypocrisy), then

Jewishness

also begin to

will

disappear. Unless an immediate effort

made

is

to in-

troduce into the schools religious subjects taught by trained religious teachers with the point of emphasizing that element of the Jewish people that

makes them

dif-

no point to being different. The Ministry of Education knows this and under-

ferent, there will be

stands exactly what should be done, but

because

it

who

Labor Establishment and

will its

weaken the power of

its

is

more devoted

it

is

to the

to the perpetuation

own power.

Jewish nationalism cannot long exist ingful

the

hold on the government.

the Israeli Establishment, devoted as

people and state, of

fears to act

fears the possible creation of a generation of

religious youngsters

And

it

way without

religion

the Jewish religion,

in a

mean-

and the Jewish

remains vapid and empty without Revelation

The Chosen People: Questions

81

and Jewish election as a Chosen People. These concepts must be introduced into the schools, and the Jewish books and sources from which we derive these concepts must be studied and absorbed by our little children before

we

lose them.

We

must learn from the disaster of the past hundred and fifty years and return to the sources from which

and the strength to survive, to overcome, to return to the Land. We must relearn and teach those basic concepts that always were the mainstream of historical Jewry and that every Jew, to his delight and salvation, once believed in. Above our fathers derived their pride

all,

the disaster that

in self

education

is

in Israel

must be

totally

overhauled and reshaped along the proud lines of Jewish nationalism and tradition. The truth of Jewish tradition

and Torah values must be reintroduced to the grandchildren of a people that once believed and observed it. It is not merely a question of making the young Jew religious,

portant

is

although that

is

surely the ideal.

More im-

the fact that without a basic knowledge of

Judaism and heritage

becomes ultimately impossible to create a people totally committed to itself and its destiny. It is no longer possible, especially with sensitive and introspective Jewish youth, to create a proud and committed nation on the basis of nationalism alone. Pure nationalism no longer suffices to claim the loyalties it

and chauvinistic for on the artificial divisions of people and boundaries. There must be something unique and different that calls for their

and souls of youth.

them

to hear

It

demands

is

illogical

for absolute loyalty based

loyalty or they will not give

it.

OUR CHALLENGE And

82

there must be something that binds the youth

and sacrificing being, or else he will descend into the same maelstrom of violence, crime, class struggle, selfish demanding, and materialistic into a disciplined

grubbing that destroy

all

and patriotism have long It

is

other societies. Nationalism since failed in this respect.

only the uniqueness of the divine seal that

young Jew the

difference, the ha-mavdil

beyn from the nations. It is this that calls him to be different, to stamp Jewishness on himself and his state. It is only this that helps him to understand the meaning of Jewish suffering throughout the ages and the stubborn defiance, on the

gives the

yisroel I'amim, the separation of Israel

demanded that Unless the young Jew

part of his forefathers, of the world that the

Jew

assimilate

and disappear.

begins to understand something of the true and deep values of Judaism he will never be able to understand

why Jews

suffered for the Sabbath, for kashrut, against

intermarriage.

He

Mattathias and

will

never be able to comprehend a

Maccabean sons

up and risking all for laws that appear so antiquated and that his society mocks. For the one who questions his history has no future since he who does not understand where he came from cannot know where he is going. It is, therefore, not enough that the young Jew should observant. There is more to it than that. If not for be his

rising

him understand the depth and greatness of Judaism and the need to have the character and color of the nation and state stamped with Jewish uniqueness. At least let him understand that the nation and state are special things. Only then will he give them both his pure and unadulterated self. himself, at least let

The Chosen People: Questions

How

can

be done? In only one way.

this

Jewish education. The Jewish school in is

83

Israel.

where Judaism and Jewish nationalism begin

This their

mind of the Jewish youngster. Jew is molded or a disastrous

progress into the heart and

where a successful

This

is

one.

Today

—

the schools of Israel turn out a series of un-

mitigated Jewish disasters.

whose model

We

have created schools

the western school, which strives at

is

turning out the model of the western man.

which succeed

schools

in

lawyers, architects, scientists.

For they

utterly

fail

nationalist Jew. try!

This

is

And

in

They are

producing good doctors,

And

so they are disasters.

producing a warm, proud,

the worst of

it is

that they

do not

not the aim of the school curriculum, this

not the target that the Ministry of Education sets eyes upon. There

We

schools of Israel. shall

no

is

school

is

its

Jewish education in the

see the bitter results today,

pay a mighty and

A

real

is

bitter price

and we

tomorrow.

a place to indoctrinate, to mold and to

shape young minds and souls. Those

who do

not think

so contribute to our disaster. Nonvalue schools produce

nonvalue children. Western-type schools produce west-

avowed aim is to produce proud, knowledgeable, unique Jews, do just that. Only they do that.

ern-type children. Jewish schools, whose

A

parent has a duty to indoctrinate the child. His

or her obligation

is

to

instill in

the child the values of the

The parent who fails to do this is a failure as a The same is true of a state. The schools it creates must reflect the values of the state and the people, and ours do not. Our children do not emerge with pride in themselves as a unique and special people. They are not

parent.

parent.

OUR CHALLENGE

84

overwhelmed with the magnificence and the truth of They do not glow with soulful pride in their history and the achievements of their fathers. They do not look back with pride on the sacrifices and dedtheir tradition.

ication of their ancestors in the Exile or the flaming

actions of those

who

returned to

the British imperialist enemy.

till

the soil

They emerge

and smash

like all other

children anywhere in the western world, with the

same

shallow values, the same vapid, materialistic dreams, the

same boredom and

feeling that

boring. These are your gods,

life

is

empty and

O schools of Israel.

The schools must be changed or we are doomed as a state. The entire curriculum must be changed,

people and

and direction must be changed. Today the overwhelming majority of our children rush into the streets whose shining lights speak of

the entire approach

discotheques,

automobiles,

girls

(and

boys),

money

good times, excitement, the of New York or Paris or London. They envy life

(hopefully) in one’s pocket, lure

American-style,

and

little

appreciating

existential bankruptcy.

they adore

it;

moral, spiritual,

matter, they worship

it;

they hang on to every English word on

television, every irrational style

No

its

song and beat, every mad

and mode. The Land of

Israel

is less

than special

it is a land that is poor and where work is demanding and pay is low. Elsewhere the lights glitter and good times beckon. And they yearn to get out. There are really no such things as no-value schools. For if schools do not teach values, the vacuum that is the child’s soul is filled with values picked up in the streets. The materialism that corrodes the soul demands

for them;

The Chosen People: Questions

85

and so crime and prostitution become ways to achieve the good life that the products of Israeli education yearns for. Violence and sadism and brutality and utter lack of concern for anyone else ease the fulfillment,

frustrations

and

lights

And

who cannot

of those

glitter that

is all

achieve the bright

should there come, G-d forbid,

we

sion, then

will

watch while

ing in elementary discipline the state, even

in

good

them in life. an economic reces-

that matters to

those

all

who

are so lack-

and concern for the good of turn into protesting,

times,

demonstrating, even violent demanders of “more.” All the social problems

and communal problems and

class

—

emerge in all their fury and where will ahavat Yisroel be, to moderate and block the war between

struggles will

brothers?

will

It

not be there. For the same schools

that did not teach the uniqueness of the Jew, could not

teach the need to place Jewish national and brotherly values

first.

For a minority, more sensitive and intelligent, the nonvalue vacuum is filled by questioning and searching for

ideals.

Is

it

surprising that there are those

who

question the basic values and sacred cows of Israel? Wait, we have seen only the beginning.

begun to drink from the have

bitter

We

have only

we

ourselves

Make them

places of

potion that

stirred.

Overhaul the schools, Jewish indoctrination,

youngest age.

From

I

say.

instilling

the time the

Jewish values from the

Jew

enters his school at

him the knowledge and belief that the Jewish people and tradition are divinely chosen, unique and true. Let the knowledge of kindergarten,

let

the

aim be

to

instill in

OUR CHALLENGE his glorious history, taught in a prideful

86

way, flow over

him. Let him open a traditional Jewish book and, under the guidance of sympathetic, believing teachers,

begin to understand the

warmth and beauty of

let

him

its

sub-

stance and why, for these books like these, his great-

grandparents

were

prepared

to

make

the

ultimate

sacrifice.

Let the pride of the Revolt, of the Irgun and Lechi

and Palmach and Haganah fill his mind at an early age. Let him know of the heroes of the nation who went to the gallows and let him mark their passing with bowed head and their exploits with joy. What normal nation hides its heroes from its youth? Only the abnormal one that is in the hands of politicians. Let Zionism be taught and Zionist history in detail and with positive pride. Let the story of the Jewish communities in the Galut be taught so that the ties between Jews here and there are strengthened. Let the names of Jewish heroes throughout the ages be learned and known in depth, and not superficially. Let the Holocaust be a meaningful thing for the young Israeli from earliest childhood and let it be taught with pride in that which once was sadness for that which disappeared. Let the exploits of Jewish partisans and freedom fighters of Eastern Europe be known. In short, let Jewish nationalism infuse the mind and the spirit of the Jewish youngster in Eretz Yisroel from the day that he enters

—

the Jewish school. Yet,

let

us

remember

that while

it is

vital to

begin

immediately to strengthen, reinforce, and add to the nationalist indoctrination of our

young children,

to over-

The Chosen People: Questions

87

and empty national education of our schools, in the end it is not in mere secular nationalism, like that of other nations, that we will find the real answer to the salvation of our national soul and the redemption of our confused children. It is not secular education and haul the

sterility

not secular movements or parties that hold the key. For while energetic nationalist education will halt the tide

temporarily and save not a few from the purposelessness of their

the secular nationalist can never succeed

lives,

an honest answer to the question: Why be a Jew? And if there is one thing that youth both in Israel and outside demands, it is honesty. in giving

used to maintain (and

Israelis

perceptive Israel

and

still

many

of the

less

do) that assimilation was impossible in

that, therefore, religion

and Judaism were

not necessary for the existence of the people. Aside

from the patently

false

assumption that the

spiritual

Jew was simply an artificial attempt to save him from disappearing and served no other function; aside from the obvious question of what in the world is so important about saving a people from characteristic of the

assimilating

if

there

is

—

nothing special

about that

from this the fact is that the statement is The Jew in Israel can assimilate in the sense that he slowly changes from a Jew into an “Israeli,” dropping everything that made him unique and weakening all the ties that bind him to the Jew outside of the Land. He can assimilate because he sees no good reason for remaining a Jew and a great many reasons for not. The thought that by rejecting Jewishness he also abandons every moral right to the Land of the Jewish people people; aside

false in itself.

OUR CHALLENGE (for, after all,

88

what except the Jewish claim allowed his Arabs for hundreds

fathers to enter a land inhabited by

of years) does not concern him. ness of the

Jew because he

He

rejects the special-

correctly perceives that with-

out the divine faith of the Jew there

He becomes

a normal

Israeli.

Middle East and the world and

He

is

no

specialness.

assimilates into the

tries to

do what every

assimilationist in the Galut tried to do.

He

from schizophrenia, this young Israeli, and he seeks to escape it. The disease is foisted on him by all those Zionist founding fathers who insist that he remain true to his Jewish people and his Jewish state and then proceed to divest their own lives and their

own

suffers

may

Jewishness of anything special. Older people

understand the dilemmas and frauds of their

lives

but

own up to them. Younger ones find it much simpler to be honest wreckers, and we see them at work today. Noar Zahav. It is true: they are gold, and they are good and they can be fine Jews and they want to be. It is not their fault if their homes, their schools, and their state leave them hungry and yearning for uniquely Jeware too weary and too frightened to

ish answers. Again,

young Jews who

I

will

say,

though how wonderful if

they did. But

it is

it

is

not only a question of

observe Torah and mitzvot

—

al-

would be for them and for us more than that. If not practicing, it

individual Jews, at least they should understand that the

nation and state must be shaped and run along uniquely

Jewish

lines, that the

personality

people and state must reflect least that.

its

and character of the Jewish heritage

—at

The Chosen People: Questions

The is

struggle for the souls

89

and minds of our youth

the greatest problem facing the State of Israel today.

Before

it,

all

other problems fade into insignificance, for

depend largely on whether our Jewish be proud Jews, good Jews, sacrificing Jews,

their solutions

youth

will

Jews who conceive of themselves as uniquely different, hence bound together in one common ideal. Without he will see the constant wars with the Arabs and

this,

who needs a new state if there is wars? He will either leave the country or

scream

in frustration:

no end

to the

turn his back on Zionism and the great will

dream

for

him

have the taste of ashes.

We mate

it

ignore the problem or belittle at

our

own

peril.

The

it

or underesti-

jackals, the

demagogues,

work and we must meet We must give them a reason for being Jews, a reason for holding on to the traditional and ancient Jewish values. We must define our youth; we must tell them who they are. We must answer their questions: What and why is a Jew? What and why am I?

the wreckers are already at

them and give our youth the

Idea.

4 The Chosen People: Definitions “Now — Herefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people; for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy .” nation (Exodus 19: 5-6). “Happy are we, how good is our portion, how pleasant our lot, how beautiful our .

.

inheritance” (from the morning prayer service).

More than

three millennia ago,

on a day

like

any

other day, but incomparably more so, the world stood

The Chosen People : Definitions

moment

for a brief

still

in history. It

in

which the Jewish people came into being.

For the Jew of Jews beginning

when

was the moment It was the

had been created.

for which history itself

moment

91

at

history, for all the generations of

that

awesome moment

at

Sinai

and the earth trembled and an entire people heard the voice of its creator and saw the manifestations of his being and until our so very recent the heavens shook

Age of Confusion, there was never a problem of identity. The Jewish people knew exactly what it was. It knew when it came into being, why it came into being, what was expected of it, and what its ultimate destiny would be.

—

The Jew who was our ancestor down to our greatgrandfathers and grandfathers knew that the Jewish nation was a nation like no other. This was not merely another Moab or Canaan or Edom or Persia or Greece

—

or Albania or Bulgaria. There

is

precious

more obnoxious come into being through

the world for one

nation had not

little

need

in

nation-state. This

the usual evolu-

tion of a handful of tribes into a permanent, larger

The Jewish nation had a specific moment it could point to when it became a nation. The Jew could lay his finger upon that moment in history and say: Here is where and here is when I became a people. It was at

entity.

moment

the

a

in

joy,

of Sinai, with the entire nation standing

sublime that the

instant

of

awe and incomprehensible

L-rd revealed himself and created his

nation.

And for this

the

new

Jew always knew

nation’s being.

that there

He knew

was a reason

that an everlasting

OUR CHALLENGE

92

covenant had been agreed to on that day. “V'atem

mamlechet kohanim v’goy kadosh” (“And you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation”) was dependent upon im shamoa tishmiy b’koli ush martem et briti” (“if you shall hearken unto my voice and safeguard my covenant”). Only for the Jew did the world come into being and only because of the Torah was the Jew created. The Torah, the word of G-d, the perfect Law even when imperfect man cannot fathom all its depths. The Torah, the way of life that leads to kedusha and pertihiyu

li

44

fection.

And Torah,

the condition for Jewish nation-

hood whose relationship with its Jews determines Jewish future and destiny. All that would befall the Jew, for good or bad, was predicated on his relationship to the Law. It was a destiny that was irrevocable and the Jew, try as he might, could not and would not ever escape from it. This was his election; this was why he was chosen. Not as a “master race.” Not as a “superior race.” But chosen for Torah, commandments, and holiness.

And

the

the chosen

Jew knew

that he, the

Chosen People of

Law, had been given a chosen Land. And that

from the moment that G-d, the creator and possessor of heaven and earth, decreed that this land was Israel’s, irrevocable title was issued in the name of the Jew. All past claims and all future claims became irrelevant. The Land was the Land of Israel and land was

no one

his, for

else’s.

to reach his

Here the Jew was to fullfill his destiny, potential, to achieve kedusha (holiness).

Only here was kedusha and everything

else outside the

boundaries of the Holy Land was tumah, impurity, and

;

The Chosen People: Definitions

93

The land of Israel represented spiritual and physical safety and ehutz iaretz (outside the Land) symbolized physical and spiritual danger. Little wonder that such a people was trained to Galut, exile.

ignore the pettiness of

life,

to reject the vanities

transitory foolishness that crossed

and the

path. Great people

its

have no time for petty ventures and the Jewish people

was created for greatness. Little wonder that the persecutions and sufferings that befell the Jew were looked upon with the proper perspective of temporariness that they deserved. This was an eternal people and eternal men do not bother with the momentary distresses of history.

Neither persecution nor derision can

man who knows self

who

and is

his life,

that he

who

is

correct,

likes himself

who

move a

has pride in him-

and respects

himself,

blessed with the truth that leads to hadar, pride.

It is

time that

we and our

knew of Jewish

children

greatness and Jewish destiny.

It

is

ourselves a Jewish reason for being.

time that we gave It is

time for hadar.

Hadar ! That noble giant of our times, Zev Jabotinsky, touched upon the pride of the Jew, the nobility and grandeur that follow him throughout the generations, when he wrote: Hadar! A Jew even a nobleman ,

in

poverty

,

is

Whether slave or serf you were created a Prince,

Crowned

with the diadem of David

What is hadar? If he would if

he would truly

dignity, the

feel the

truly

.

.

.

know Jewish

pride,

confidence of self-respect and

Jew must go back and

return to an under-

OUR CHALLENGE standing of what

it is

94

makes a Jew different. Judaism philosophy from this comes the

that

— heritage, tradition,

—

very essence of hadar.

As I once wrote: “Our grandfather stood upon a burning mountain and conversed with G-d.

He brought back

The world was never the same since.” Jewish pride begins with the knowledge that it was we who gave the world the concept of the one, merciful G-d who created man so that he might reach holiness. This was the beginning of that civilization with him a

man

gift called

the Torah.

has so unceasingly reached for until this very day.

Our

pride

lies in

the concept, “Hear

our G-d, the L-rd

O

Israel, the

One.” In the fact that G-d

L-rd

is

lifted

us from mediocrity and proclaimed for us a difficult

is

“And thou shalt be for me a special kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Up from

but magnificent task: people, a

mediocrity, up to holiness

—

this is the

Those who wrap themselves

hallmark of the Jew.

in the

Marxist prayer

shawl and thrice daily bless the Jew-hating economist for having given the world social justice and conscience, incredibly ignore the justice

claimed by Judaism,

its

and

liberty that

was pro-

prophets and rabbis, long before

was a Lenin or a Mao. Thus spoke our rabbis the Talmud:

there

Just as the Almighty

is

in

called merciful and gracious,

thou too be merciful and gracious. Just as the Almighty ,

is

is

called righteous , thou too , be righteous

ness.

Just as he

.

goodness thou too be abundant in goodJust as the Almighty is called Holy thou too

abundant

be holy

in

,

,

,

.

,

The Chosen People: Definitions

The call

to holiness

to achieve that holiness

is

the seal of the

Jew and the way

—that rising above base,

animal limitation to a world of spirit, giving, and

—

selfish,

sacrifice

way of commandments,

achieved only through the unqiue Jewish

is

life,

95

the observance of the mitzvot, the

of the Torah. In profound realization that the evil of man’s actions

stems from his weakness and that only a stong and mature

man

can overcome that weakness and temptation that

urges him on to

commit

evil,

Torah

the

lays

down

a

and, indeed, minute-by-minute regimen and a

daily

disciplined

way of life

Jew

to create within the

the habit

of giving, of doing without, of sacrificing, so that he learns the true values of

life

and how to

and obstacles that threaten those It

is

not

rise to

the

demands

values.

but weakness, not criminality but

evil

immaturity that are at the heart of man’s failure to reach holiness.

It is

to create a mature

strong Jew that the Torah sets as

What a

tragedy that the

rant of himself

and

his

own

Jew

its is

and

spiritually

task.

so abysmally igno-

treasures:

How

pitful that

he has not the slightest knowledge of the diamonds that he

threw away when he rejected Judaism for bagels and lox,

Miami Beach, and

and Reform Temple Jew searches for belonged to his grandfather and that the son of the latter destroyed his own offspring by denying

charades!

to his

own

Who

What

the Conservative

irony that that which the young

child the heritage that he himself perverted! will

tell

the

young Jew, who

frantically seeking himself, that kashrut

is

races about

not an out-

dated thing which originally came into being because the

OUR CHALLENGE

96

Jews of yore knew what was clean while the stupid goyim ate dirt? Who will see in it the discipline that demands the ability to give up a food that one might be

clever

hungry for,

in order to

dampen that basic yearning of man

and thus bring him a little closer to the angels and raise him a little higher than the beast of the field? And who will tell the young Jew that his father — and Reform rabbi are both ignoramuses when they delight in telling us that the Sabbath comes to stop us from “work” and thus modern man has no longer any need for the Mosaic antiquity? Who will show him the beauty of a day that forbids not work but production of any kind, laborious or done with flick of a switch, in order that man for at least one day of the week may divest himself of his hunger for profits and his illusion that he is the creator and determiner of the progress of for food

—

the world.

Society and the world will never change until

man

does, and goodness and mercy will not settle on the

general world until the particular

and

merciful.

And

that

man

will

man

within

it

is

good

not and cannot change

without a demanding and disciplined way of

life

that

him from a child into an adult, from a weak and demanding creature into a mature and sacrificing one. And so, Judaism imposes upon man the mitzvot, the commandments that are the yoke that sets him free. No, turns

it is the “liberated” man and woman, do whatever they please, who are, in truth, enThey are prisoners to their own desires, frustra-

not a paradox, for free to

slaved.

tions, searchings, bodies. his

body and

his impulse,

and emancipated.

It is

only the

“no!”

who

man who can tell truly a man free

is

.

The Chosen People: Definitions Jewish tradition and heritage!

97

A return to the source

we may understand the essence of hadar and so that we may know the power of pride and self-respect. Is there any wonder that our people smiled with that power of hadar even as they were degraded and ground into the dust? One cannot degrade those who are called the children of the Almighty. One of Jewish uniqueness so that

who are but a little lower who knows where he came from and One

cannot grind into the dust those than the angels.

where he

is

others and

going

its

is

free of all fear of

most dangerous

result

— self-hatred.

The Jewish people looks forward “The L-rd

and

his

name

end of days, that “All mankind

and they

one.”

day when on that day will

to the

shall be king over all the earth:

the L-rd be one

contempt by

It is

will call in

then, in the

your name

.

.

your sovereignty.” This dream of

shall accept

on the acceptance of the truth of the kingdom of the L-rd and his Law, is the universal brotherhood, based

ultimate Jewish one.

But to speak of a universality

not based on the divine truth of Torah

is

to speak of both

falsehood and illusion. Mere unity of peoples has never created a better society lusion.

— witness

the

Communist

Mere integration and knocking down of

de-

barriers

assures us of nothing better than before. Indeed, one unified world based

on falsehood, corruption, and

evil is

worst of all things, for then, man has no on this earth place to which to flee and to practice truth and goodness. Universality, yes. But only under an idea infinitely the

that truly transforms for the Jew,

is

Man

into a better being. This idea,

Torah, and

until that idea

is

accepted

no assimilation, integration, and elimination of barriers between Jew and gentile. Such a falsely

there can be

OUR CHALLENGE

98

assimilated world will see the uniqueness of Jewish identity eliminated and, with

it,

all

hope of changing the

world.

Separation of the Jew from the non-Jewish world

meant separation and preservation of the Jewish idea from contamination and assimilation. If it is true that “Ata Bchartanu mikal ha'amim ” (“Thou hast chosen us from all the nations”) then it is also true that the same “thou” is also the one who is “hamavdil beyn kodesh Vchol beyn Yisroel lamim” separates the holy from the profane Israel from the nations”). The Jewish demand for separation is based on the axiom that truth and falsehood cannot mix lest the truth become impaired and eventually threatened with extinction. The Jew can love mankind but he need not go to bed with it. Judaism can teach its truths to man but only when it stands aside, separated and chosen. If we have pride in the perfection of Torah we would be worse than mad to destroy it by assimilation and integration. Jewish hadar speaks of the uniqueness of the Jew, of the perfection of his Torah and of the need to always

.

.

.

.

preserve this havdala

Hadar

is

.

.

—separatism.

achieved too through a study of Jewish

history, that magnificent chronicle of a people

defies all logic.

A

which

deep, intensive, and faithful study of

this history is absolutely necessary for the children of

our age.

Our age. If we seek a proper label for our times, we search for some phrase to describe this era in which we live, we could find none better then the Age of if

Confusion.

The Chosen People: Definitions

How

99

and how broken are the compasses How awesome is our fear of freedom, the freedom we demanded so loudly. How unsure and how lost we are and how pitifully we fall deeper and deeper into the quicksand as we thrash that

we

lost

we

are

so frantically snatch!

about desperately searching for the firm land of stability.

And how much nonsense does this confusion engender self-hate and how much self-destruction! And those who suffer most, who are the most confused, are our youth. How little our youth know about themselves and how much they begin to despise themselves and those who made them what they are. How absent the self-respect; how lacking the hadar. How much they need, these youngsters, who question the special-

and how much

ness of the

Jew and

his

claim to his Land, to peer into the

history of their people

and drink from that history the

refreshing waters of pride.

for the sabra

who

How

important

is

this history

increasingly speaks of “Palestine”

and Jewish “intransigence” and the “brotherhood of nations” and the “de-Zionization of Israel.” Jewish history! That whirlpool of tragedy, drama, and courage, whose richness and color dazzle anyone who plunges into its depths. For the Jew whose ignorance of self

is

devastating,

it is

essential that he travel back-

ward through the pages of his own times. It is necessary that he learn what his stubborn ancestors did or refused to do, and how, but for their obstinacy, he would not exist today.

How feel

—as

cence

important

it

is

for our youth to learn

—

and

to

much as possible the greatness and magnifiof the moment of return and all the events that

OUR CHALLENGE led

100

up to it. How important it is for us to teach them. They must know about that moment on the fifth

day of

Iyar, as they

the “Zionists,”

stood in the

They, the Jews,

streets.

our people. The year that was 1948

to the world but

which to us was 1878

— one thousand

hundred and seventy years since the beginning of the long Exile. For that is how Jews always counted their

eight

history.

We

must never

them

let

forget the

moment,

the farmers, tailors, housewives, mechanics, students

and Auschwitz survivors

as

—

— stood quietly, listening. Listen-

marked an end and a beginning of an impossible dream come true. The words entered their ears, filled their'minds, and flooded their eyes and hearts: ing to a proclamation that

We

hereby proclaim

Jewish

State

Yisroel.

.

.

in

the

Palestine

to

establishment

be

called

.

And who can forget the moment when, drifted off into the cloudless sky, the

burst into

Od lo

of the Medinat

song— the

as the

words

Jews of Tel-Aviv

song:

avda tikvateynu

.

.

.

Our hope is not yet lost The hope of two thousand years. To be a free people in our land The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

How

they sang and how, for just that

moment

in

time, they rose to the heights of immortality with tears

The Chosen People: Definitions

down

101

and joy beyond that of this world gripping their souls. Those Jews were witness to a fulfillment, an impossible fulfillment of an imposstreaming

sible

their faces

journey and promise. In a word, they stood before

a miracle: It

“And

the people

saw the L-rd

was the culmination of an odyssey

that puts the

most imaginative fiction to shame. It was the success of the Jew who had cried out to his G-d: “I shall not die but

I

shall live

and

tell

of the creations of the L-rd”.

Of the Jew whose obstinacy and stubborness had worn down even his G-d. Shall we not sit with tears of pride and remember how the Roman legions came and burned our Temple and drove us out of our land, but not before we fought like lions for every inch and enshrined the names of Bethar and Masada in the annals of bravery forever? And shall we not, in amazement and disbelief, read the roll call of the enemies erase the Jewish

name from

who

vainly sought to

the face of the earth and

who, themselves, are today but

relics

of the ancient

Haman

past? Pharaoh, Assyria, Babylonia,

of Persia,

Hadrian of the Romans,

Antiochus of the Greeks,

Christian fanatics throughout Europe and Asia Minor,

Muslim

fanatics in

and, in our

own

North Africa and the Middle East,

time, Nazi

Germany and

the Soviet

Union.

Pharaoh drowned our babies and we survived him.

The Amalekites demanded and we still live. Babylon

that

we

perish in the desert

exiled us

and we returned.

Haman plotted to wipe us out in one day and it was he who was hanged. Antiochus decreed that the Torah not be allowed to exist and today Jewish scholars tour the

OUR CHALLENGE

102

monuments

to a dead Greece. Titus built an “ arch to immortalize our demise and cried out, Judea rotting

capta,” but

Roman

legions have long since vanished

from the face of the earth. When the Jew was scattered to the four corners of the earth he took with him his prayers and his belief that someday he would return home. The Byzantines could oppress him, the Chruch curse and shame him, the Inquisition, the Crusaders, and the feudal Christians seek his soul and take his body. The Muslims could steal his children in Yemen, drive him out of Granada, and enclose him in the ghettos of North Africa. He could be exiled from nation to nation, burned at the stake, be torn apart by drunken peasants in Poland and fanatic Arabs in the Orient, but the Jew, obsessed with his faith and the knowledge that he would survive, opened his Torah, believed in his G-d, and dreamed of Return. He would sit on the cold stone floor with flickering candles at his feet in countless synagogues on Tisha b’Av, the Day of Lamentations, and remember “the city that was filled with people hath become a widow.” He would be beaten and pray, “Unto Jerusalem your city, return in mercy”; he would be burned and shout forth, “Next year in Jerusalem”; he would be gassed and say, “I believe with perfect faith that my eyes will behold your return in mercy to Zion.” Our grandfather who rose from the ruins of the burned Temple was the first Zionist. Herzl and Pinsker and Hess? It was not they who brought us back or who created Zionism. They were merely men whose time had come and who put into practice the dream that had been

The Chosen People: Definitions saved for them by the Jews of eternity.

103

was the stub-

It

born and obstinate Jews, our fathers, who preserved Israel, which never had to come into being because it

had never gone out of existence, in the mind and heart of the Jew. We owe no thanks to an Arthur Balfour or a

League of Nations or a United Nations.

Israel

would

have risen without them simply because the stubborness of a Jewish grandfather can be denied only so long.

Let us teach this

unto our children and unto

it

theirs,

magnificent chronicle of our people, for one

who

walks the footpaths of Jewish history can never be a self-hater,

can never doubt the existence of

his G-d.

Within the story of the Jewish past we find ourselves,

our pride, our

belief,

and our

future.

There are too many among us who worship daily the shrine of every “national liberation the world.

They

their god.

They

among

Mao; every brown revolutionary

find revolt against oppression every-

where except among except

in

prostrate themselves before the feet of

every Trotsky, Che, and is

movement”

at

their

own

people. Heroes galore,

Jews. “There are no Jewish heroes of the

struggle against imperialism

and there

is

no Jewish

lib-

eration,” they cry.

How much we

need to penetrate the minds and

and tell them the story of Jewish and revolt against the tyrant and the

hearts of our youth

national liberation

oppressor.

These are the things that we must teach our children

day and

Of

night:

the

mad

Jewish students and ideologists

who

returned to their malaria-ridden desert of a land and, in

OUR CHALLENGE the face of astonishment

from

its

and

ridicule,

104

began to pluck

it

ruins.

Of the mad Jews named Jabotinsky and Trumpeldor who awoke one morning with the dream of a Jewish army the first in two thousand years and created a

—

—

Jewish Legion whose ranks were

with the motley

filled

and wonderfully strange people from Poland and Russia and London’s East End. Of Trumpeldor going down before the bullets of the “oppressed” Arabs with the words: “ Ayn davar tov lamut ba'ad artzeynu” (It doesn’t matter it’s .

.

good to

die for our country”).

Che, every

.

.

.

they been said by

would tatoo

leftist in Israel

Of the Arab

Had

.

it

on

his breast.

years 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936-39, the years of

riots

against

women,

children

and

religious

students.

Of Perfidious Albion’s cynical efforts to destroy dream of a Jewish state by cutting off the east bank of Eretz Yisroel and creating a puppet farce called “Transjordan.” Of the further efforts by the imperialist British to side with the Arabs by looking away from every “revolutionary” riot and rape and by limiting all Jewish colonization and immigration.

the

Of

the rise of Jewish heroes

Jewish blood that

it

is

is

who proclaimed

that

not hefker cheap and for the taking, and ,

not a mitzva to die like a dog at the hands

of the goy.

Of

the burial of the madness

known

as

havlaga, self-restraint, and the striking back with Jew-

and bullet. Of the creation of the magnificent Irgun Zvai Leumi and Fighters for the Freedom of Israel who showed the non-Jew that the “old Jew” of the Land

ish fist

”

The Chosen People: Definitions of Israel and been resurrected and

who

105

taught his more

timid brothers the lesson that Esau respects only strength.

Of

the

name Shlomo Ben

Yosef, the

to the gallows under the tyrant British,

first

who

Jew

to

go

served as the

example for Jewish courage and revolt for all those who would follow, shouting: “Lamut o lichbosh et hahar (To die or to conquer the mount”).

Of David Raziel who fell fighting the Nazis in Iraq while the Arab revolutionaries there were backing Hitler (as had the leader of the Arab “freedom fighters,” the Mufti, and Anwar Sadat). Of Hannah Senesh, who dropped into Nazi-occupied Hungary to try to save her brothers destined for slaughter, and who was shot by the Nazis.

Of Yair, Avraham Stern, who wrote of the nameless men who build a state with blood and fire. Of the Struma and Patria and all the ships with manage to get through and of all the Jews who never even managed to get aboard a ship to be turned back. Of all the ships that did desperate refugees that did not

get

through because the Haganah persisted

in

defying

the oppressor.

Of Eliahu Hakim and Eliahu Bet Tzuri, who shot to death Lord Moyne, the imperialists’ “man in Cairo.” Of the Irgunists who watched with cold anger as their men were flogged and who then bared the backs of the imperialists and flogged them— and not another Jew was ever again so shamed. Of all the names of the heroes that we need not search for in the ranks of the Vietcong or Cubans. All

our lovely and shining Jews

who gave

of themselves so

OUR CHALLENGE we might

106

and so that the Jewish people might free itself of its oppressors and its Galut, to return home. Of all the names that we must burn forever into the hearts of our youth: Shlomo Ben Yosef, Dov Gruner, Eliezer Kashani, Eliahu Hakim, Eliahu Bet Tzuri, Yachiel Dresner, Mordechai Alkashi, Moshe Barazani, Meir Feinstein, Meir Nakar, Yakov Weiss, Avshalom Habib. Can one now begin to understand the miracle that

that

is

live

the existence of the Jewish people?

It

is

this stub-

bornness, this obstinate faith that never for a

moment

wavered, that adds yet another dimensions to hadar,

Jewish pride. That dimension indestructibility

of

the

is

bitachon

Jewish

with perfect faith that the Jewish people

A

tible.

—faith We

people.

is

in the

believe

indestruc-

people which has suffered the cruelty, the op-

and the Holocausts of the long night of Exile which has descended for so many centuries upon it and which, nevertheless, survived each and every one of its more powerful enemies, cannot be destroyed. It is pression,

this firm belief that

Seder

is

echoed every year

Passover

table:

In every generation they rise

the

at the

Holy One

,

up

to destroy us but

blessed be he, rescues us from their

hands.

“Can

these bones live?” the Prophet Ezekiel

asked as he beheld the vision of a valley

filled

was

with dry

and dead Jewish bones.

And

a million voices cry out: “They can and do and

shall!” This

is

bitachon.

The Chosen People: Definitions

And

this survival

is

accomplished without

In the end, at times of crisis, there are

Who

Jew.

himself.

no

allies

107

allies.

for the

can the Jew ultimately trust? None but

To whom can

he look for assurance and guar-

antees? Only to himself and his Divine Protector. This is

enough to assure Jewish hadar

swell our hearts with

survival.

That

is

enough to

.

And because of these and all the unsung and unknown Jews, who gave their lives al kiddush a-shem (to sanctify his Name), and who made up the oldest and most

persistent national liberation

movement

we survive today in our own state. Our major task today is to recognize the

in

history,

greatness

and uniqueness of the Jewish people; to recognize it, define it, and teach it unto our children; to let them

know

the magnificent destiny of the Jewish people.

There despite it.

all

is

a Jewish destiny that will not be denied

efforts to deflect

The Jewish destiny

overcomes the ish

gentile

is

it,

to destroy

it

or to change

inexorable and irresistible and

enemy from without and

opponent from within.

its

Jew-

How many Greeces and Romes

and Churches have come and gone, while the Jewish people and their Judaism continue to exist. How many Jewish sects of Baal and how many Sadducees and Karaites and Reformers have risen up and been swept away into the junkheap of history while Judaism, the same, eternal, traditional Judaism of our fathers, continues to survive. How many Borochows and Syrkins and Brenners were there in the past and will there be in the future to create their own brand of Jewishness, and how they will all fade away and be forgotten as

OUR CHALLENGE

108

anything but historical footnotes. But the Jewish people together with traditional Judaism and

and

exists,

teaching lives

its

chosen for destiny.

Let us shout

it

loud enough for our young Jews to

hear and be proud. Let us repeat

it

enough so

that

we

ourselves really believe. Let us patiently but determinedly

create a true

and honestly Jewish people and

state,

according to the basic concepts of Jewish thought: 1.

The Jewish people

is

a unique and separate

people, divinely chosen at Sinai as a religio -nation,

transcending the shallow secular nationalism that merely

divides without raising up.

2. There is a Jewish challenge: to learn, to uphold, and to teach the uniqueness of Torah that raises man to heights above the most sublime of heavenly creatures, that preaches the holiness, majesty, and divinity of man as expressed through justice, mercy, and love for all. 3. The Jewish people is one and indivisible and every Jewish brother and sister everywhere in the world is an indisoluble part of that one entity. There devolves upon each Jew the obligation to feel the physical pain

and with

sufferings of every other all

means of

Jew and

salvation, just as

to rush to his aid

it is

his

duty to reach

out to his spiritually ignorant and lost brothers

who

have wandered into strange fields and drunk from strange wells, to teach

them the words of Judaism and

the bonds

of Jewishness. 4.

While the Jew

is

part of

Man, he

for separate existence so that he

truth that

may

was given him; His primary

is

also chosen

never lose the loyalty lies with

The Chosen People: Definitions

and

the Jewish people

over

others.

all

We

their interests take precedence

Marxist concept of class

reject the

struggle that divides us.

and he can look

ajlies

109

to

The Jew has no permanent no one but himself for help on

The yardstick in judging all actions must be: good for the Jew? 5. The home of the Jewish people is in the Land of Israel, while the Exile, in all its forms and states, must

tjhisjearth. Is

it

inevitably lead either to spiritual assimilation or physical

destruction.

both

in

Thus

it is

the duty of all Jews to return

home,

order to save the Jewish body and soul as well as

to live a holy

The Jewish

and Jewish

state

is

life in

not one

entity but a receptacle for

more Levantine or Balkan

unique destiny.

The Land of Israel is people and of no one else; 6.

the

is

welcome

home

of the Jewish

there has never been a

Palestine or Palestinian people

non-Jew

the holy Jewish state.

and never

will be.

The

to live in the Jewish state as

an

boundthe Bible and Eretz

individual but not as a sovereign people, for the aries of Israel are those indicated in

Yisroel cannot be divided. 7.

Israel

The State of is

not a western state or an eastern one;

a “secular” state; nations.”

It

is

it

is

It is

Land of it is

not

not one to be modeled after “the

a Jewish state with

that this implies. ter,

Israel that arises in the

a state

whose

all

the uniqueness

personality, charac-

behavior, and structure must be the reflection of

Jewishness and Judaism.

These are the

reasons

for

being different, the

reasons for separation and separate growth and nation-

OUR CHALLENGE ality.

Not a perverted sense of a master race

110

that repro-

duces the horrors of Nazism; not the desire to conquer foreign lands

and

rule over peoples; not a

hunger for

power, wealth, cruel domination; rather a challenge to

demand

ourselves, a

more ready If

that

we be

to sacrifice. This

is

more

spiritual,

Jewish uniqueness.

our youth are not given reasons for being Jewish,

they will loosen and cut their

with

holier,

whom

they will see

little

ties

in

with world Jews,

common;

they will

and Judaism as irrelevant if not backward and harmful to world integration, amalgamation, and brotherhood. And there will follow all the practical consequences of which we spoke earlier: the lowering of the barriers to intermarriage and assimilation; the increase in emigration from Israel to the lands of prosperity; the secularization of the state and its splitting into two separate camps of two separate peoples; identification with the Arab struggle and

cast off Jewishness

the willingness to accept “peace” that

is

really suicide;

and an increase in materialism, moral anarchy, class and communal hatred, and vicious crime. Jewish values and Jewish uniqueness must be brought into the schools and the indoctrination of our children in their heritage must be

education in

Israel.

made

the

Hopefully, our youth will understand

the need to practice their Judaism. But even dividual at least

Jew

aim of

feels that

have teachers

it is

who

if

too difficult for him,

the inlet

him

present the truth in a positive

way. Let him at least have an opportunity to see the

depth and greatness of

his faith

and

heritage. Let

him

at

The Chosen People: Definitions least realize that

even

if

he cannot practice

it,

111

the Jewish

nation and state must be shaped, colored, and identified

through

it.

When

the Jewish child

is

taught the concept

of the divine election of his people and the uniqueness that

is

his heritage,

he

will

develop the pride and sense

of responsibility that will keep him a loyal and devoted

Jew. Hadar hadar atzmi

—

self-pride. This is what we must give each of the Jewish children of destiny. ,

5 The Chosen State: The Jew Without The State of Israel does not exist in a vacuum. It is not merely one more sovereign state in a world of sovereign states,

each obligated only to

carry

its

tions,

who are

passport,

who

its

citizens

are liable to

its

it.

The

laws and regula-

State of France

concentric with the citizens of France.

emigrates to the

American

who

within the actual boundaries of its territory

or on temporary leave from

who

— those

United

citizenship, gives

up

States his

is

The Frenchman and takes out

French citizenship

The Chosen State: The Jew Without

and

French nationality (he remains a

his

man

113

of French

“descent,” a vague concept).

Not so with the State of with the citizens of the

lives

It is

within the state and

carries the Israeli identity card. Israel

Jewish people, the Jewish

wherever they

may

be,

state,

certain things of

them and

is

and

who

the land of the ties to

its

Jews

what ever land they may be

remain unbroken.

citizens of,

not concentric

not concerned only with

Israel. It is

Jew who

Israeli

Israel.

it

has a right to

It

demand

has firm and definite obliga-

tions to them, for the Jewish people throughout the world

one people and

is

Israel, is

its

ultimate

under a sovereign Jewish

that the Jewish people

volved

in

home

is

state.

What

and the Land of

a dual relationship that

is

owes them duties and

am saying

1

Israel are in-

The people,

eternal.

both within and without the land, owe the land

Land of

in the

it

allegiance;

exists only as the servant

of the people.

This

is

not to say that the

Jew outside of

Israel

is

not a citizen of the country that grants him citizenship.

He

is.

It is

not to say that he

has not requested exile

it.

He

is

is

when he But while the Jew in

a citizen of Israel

not.

must serve with loyalty the country

resides, the fact

out the world

Jews are not

in

which he

remains that the Jewish people throughis

one people and that the

like

They are The Jew owes

the ties between

ties

men

between

of French

permanent and unbreak-

descent.

Firmer,

able.

his allegiance to the state in

which

which has given him benefits and which calls him its citizen. But, unlike others who descend from nations that occupy a different territory, who have left

he

lives,

OUR CHALLENGE those lands, and

Jew

who have

little if

any

ties

to

114

them the

different.

is

The Jew

whose existence is independent of any state. When there was no Jewish state, there was still a Jewish nation who were bound to the Land of Israel, and now that there is a Jewish state there

is still

is

a Jewish nation whether

state or outside

every

Jew

part of a nation

to go

it.

and

Moreover,

it

it

is

lives

within that

the obligation of

live in that state; this

has been the

hope of the Jewish people, as expressed in Judaism, its prayers and commandments. Thus, while the Jew may still

live

outside the borders of Israel, he does not lose

Land of So long as

his obligation to the

a state there or not. Israel

does not conflict with

his

Israel,

his

whether there

is

duty to the Land of

duty to the land

he temporarily resides, he must do

all in his

in

which

power

to

Land of the Jews. When that duty does come into must leave the land, give up his citizenship, and resolve the conflict by returning from Exile to his permanent home, the Land of Israel. The Jew outside of the Land of Israel lives in Exile.

aid the

conflict he

It

does not matter whether he considers

it

so or not.

never dependent upon subjective belief, when that belief is the illusion of foolish people.) His home is the Land of Israel, whether there is a Jewish state or not. His obligation is to that Land (he

(Truth

is

especially

prays for rain for the Land of Israel) and his obligation

is

go up to that Land. (No political Zionism can ever match the religious obligation to go and live in the Land, for it is the religion that created a concept of Zion in the

to

first place).

The

fact that the

Jew does not

return to Zion

The Chosen

State:

The Jew Without

115

no way frees him from the obligation or from the need to do all that is necessary to aid those who do live there. If a Jewish state comes into existence in the Land of Israel, that state has a right to call upon all Jews for support. It is not charity or the goodness of the Jew in in

Exile that

is

question here.

in

One

aids the needy of

Africa or Asia or any foreign state because one under-

human

stands the moral obligation to help a

Jew aids the Jewish state or the Land of Israel because it is

being in

need. But the

the people

who

the Jewish

live in

home, because

An

it

his obligation to,

is

appeal for funds for Israel

for India.

The one

is

a

is

call for

because

it

is his.

not an appeal for funds

a stranger and the other

is

an obligation toward one’s own. One should help the one must help his own.

stranger,

The obligation of the Jew in Exile to the Land of Israel, and to any sovereign Jewish state therein, is unimpeachable, no matter those Jews

how

difficult this

who have persuaded

Exile citizenship has cut

all

may

be for

themselves that their

but fraternal

ties

with the

Land of the Jews. But the relationship between the Jew the Jewish Land is

is

not one-sided.

obliged to aid the Land, the

upon

itself

Jew throughout

When

the is

and

in Exile

obliged to look

the world.

State of Israel has at times recognized this

concept. At other times it.

Land

in Exile

Jew

as the guardian, the trustee, the spokesman,

the defender of the

The

If

it

the question of

has ignored

German

West Germany obligated

itself

it

or swerved from

reparations arose and to

pay hundreds of

millions of dollars for Jewish property confiscated

and

OUR CHALLENGE destroyed,

the

Germans agreed

State to

of

Israel

demanded

—and

116

the

— the recognition of the Jewish state

as the guardian and

spokesman of the European Jews

who were

And

this

destroyed.

if

there are those

who

say that

guardianship holds true only for dead Jews and that

Israel

is

merely their executor,

let

us point to yet

another shining affirmation of the true role of the Jewish

judgment of Adolph Eichmann. was not in existence at the time that Eichmann’s crimes took place and which laid no claim to the citizenship of those victims had no “legal" right to try Eichmann. Yet it was the moral claim

state, in its

Surely, a state that

of guardianship and trusteeship over the Jewish people

was Israel’s argument and brief to the world. Eichmann was tried before a court of the Jewish state

that

because he attempted to wipe out the Jewish people; he was hanged by the Jewish state because he tried to

wipe out the Jewish nation. The Jewish

state stands as

representative of the Jewish nation whether at the time of the crime,

of

it

asks for

its

aid, or

people disassociates or

it

existed

whether the nation or any part

whether any part of the Jewish

itself

from a relationship to people

state.

and guardian that the comes to the Jewish people and seeks monetary support or demands manpower through Aliya. It does not come and merely ask for that aid. If it did, it would not concentrate primarily on Jews. When the Israeli or the United Jewish Appeal speaker approaches his Jewish audience, it is not on the same basis as he would a bank or a wealthy Christian. To these there is It

is

in this role of trustee

State of Israel

The Chosen State: The Jew Without

117

an appeal unrelated to obligation or a business approach unconnected with emotion. Not so with the

either

Jewish audience. Here, there there

charity:

is

more than business and more than

obligation.

is

You

are Jews, cries the

home for which we prayed for two thousand years. You are Jews, and this is our answer to the anti-Semites. You are Jews and this is the JewIsraeli,

and

ish state.

this

is

the

Give because you should give; what kind of a

Jew does not support his own? And the Jew in Los Angeles or London or Brisbane or Paris or Johannesburg listens and nods agreement.

And If it,

gives.

the

Jew

But

is

in Exile

because he

is

that all there

owes

it

is

to the relationship?

to the Jewish state to defend

a Jew, does not the Jewish State

owe

it

him to defend him because it is a Jewish state? If Jew in London gives of himself to the Jewish state, is it not incumbent on the Jewish state to give of itself to him? Indeed, no Jewish government can avoid its obligation and turn the relationship of the Israeli and the exile into a one-way street. It is not what is good for Israel that must determine the foreign policy of the Jewish state but what is good for the Jewish people, no matter what difficulties this may cause for the Foreign Ministry. Thus if the vociferous outcries by Israel and the Zionist movement against the Soviet Union's policy on Jews conflicts with hopes for closer ties between Israel and the Kremlin, the ties must take a back seat to the needs of the Soviet

to

the

Jews.

We

have yet to hear the entire story of

Israeli passivity

and

efforts to quiet militant

official

and not-so-

OUR CHALLENGE

118

on behalf of Soviet Jewry because it the interests of the state would be harmed.

militant protests

was

felt

An

that

Israeli foreign policy that

recognizes

its

obliga-

tion as trustee of the interests of the entire Jewish people is

a foreign policy that does not hesitate to “interfere”

a United States in order to assure that

in the affairs of

legislation gress.

which

will aid Soviet

Jewry

will

pass in Con-

does not hesitate to go against the stand of an

It

American President to save Soviet Jews.

whom

it

otherwise needs, in order

Phantom jets for Israel are important

but not at the expense of Jews within the Soviet Union

and whenever the possibility of our risking Israeli interests comes up against the certainty of loss of world must take priority. Similarly, such a foreign policy makes no distinction between the endangered Israeli Jew and the endangered

Jewish interests then the

“foreign” Jew.

Lebanese

If

airliner

leader George

latter

we permit because

Habash

is

ourselves to force

we

believe

that

down

a

terrorist

aboard, knowingly violating

why

same airliner allowed to leave with the Iraqi Ambassador untouched at the very moment four hundred Iraqi Jews in Baghdad continue to live in terror, unable to leave that international law by removing him,

the

we allow ourselves to “eliminate” terrorists Cyprus, Rome, and Paris, why does the Israeli govern-

country? in

is

If

ment not allow

itself to act

against Syrian officials

who

hold four thousand Jews in a virtual prison and under

inhuman conditions? The answer is, of course, Israelis

who

that in the one case

are endangered by

Arab

it is

terrorists while in

the other, “just” Jews are threatened by their respective

The Chosen State: The Jew Without governments. That answer,

bluntly say,

I

is

119

unaccept-

able and unworthy of a Jewish government and a truly Jewish foreign policy.

The

State of Israel

upon

is

under deep moral and Jewish

and trustee of the Jewish people wherever they may be and to follow obligation to look

itself

as the guardian

a foreign policy that places Jewish interests

This

first.

has not always been so, even in the case of the interests of Israeli citizens

—and

fusal of the state to

here

I

refer to the

shameful

re-

ban the increasing and scandalous

Christian missionary activity within Israel, ostensibly

on the grounds that in a democracy such a thing cannot be done. Yet the government has been quick enough to “modify” the democratic process when the

situation

actions

is

has

felt

that

warranted. The reason given for such

usually “security,”

with that.

it

and

I

do not strongly argue

But surely security reasons that limit de-

mocracy are no more compelling for Jews than the need to stop missionaries from snatching Jewish souls.

The aries

is

real reason for Israeli refusal to stop mission-

fear of a

Church outcry:

United Nations,

in the

where a Vatican protest might endanger the Catholic Latin American vote; and in the United States, whose large Fundamentalist Protestant groups have descended in

missionary droves on the Jewish

state.

These and other

examples are blots on the garment of the Jewish state and blatant contradictions in the role of Israel vis-a-vis the Jewish people. Israel’s role as

guardian of the Jewish people

for a tough, “brazen” foreign policy.

It

calls for

it

calls

to cry

out strongly against oppression of Jews everywhere and

OUR CHALLENGE

120

to “interfere” in the internal affairs of a state that oppresses Jews,

if

need be.

vigorous

calls for

It

leadership in urging Jewish groups in

demonstrate and protest meaningfully.

all

Israeli

countries to

It calls

for action

on behalf of Jews even if it means treading on the toes of people whose support Israel feels it needs. Thus, if Arab terror becomes a real and meaningful thing— which it is— it is inexcusable for a Jewish government to disassociate itself from any aid to Jews who are targets of the terror, on the grounds that they are not Israeli citizens. There can be no distinction between Israeli Jew and non-Israeli Jew when either is a target because he is a Jew. If his Jewishness makes him a target, then the Jewish state must exercise its rule as the Jewish protector. It must do for the Jew in Exile what it demands that he do for it especially when he has become a target precisely because of his aid

—

for the Jewish state. It

is

worse than foolish to beg the nations of the

world to fight the Jewish cause and to protect their Jewish citizens from attack.

It

is

foolish because the

nations will do a perfunctory job at best. But

immoral. The Jewish state only it

is

when

it

is

it

is

also

the trustee of Jews not

stands to benefit from that relationship;

their trustee in obligation, too.

Therefore,

groups

if

there

is

in the Exile, to train

a need to organize Jewish

them, to arm them, to sup-

them haven, the Jewish state must fulfill that need. And if even more is required, namely the use of Israeli men and supplies port them, to supply them, and to give

to protect Jewish lives that are not being protected by

— The Chosen State: The Jew Without

anyone— so bility

be

it.

cannot

Israel

121

free itself of the responsi-

of meeting anti-Semitic outrages in the Exile that

grow and threaten the existence of Jews. And if Aliya becomes more than merely a to Israel but also a desperate need for

country, there

is

benefit

Jews of a particular

an obligation on the part of

Israeli

messengers to speak bluntly about the growth of Jew hatred in that country without fear of inviting either the displeasure of the host country or the wrath of the Jewish

Establishment there.

1

refer

to countries

specifically

such as Argentina and the United States. In the former

number of other Latin countries the political atmosphere is fraught with tension. The revolution in Cuba marked something far different than the usual overthrow by junta of the government. The

and to a

lesser extent in a

—

drastic social

and economic upheaval taking place

Latin America bodes

ill

for the Jew,

who

is

in

a target not

only because of his religious and racial differences. is it

It

no longer just the Right that seeks Jewish blood. Now is the Left that looks upon him as an economic target, mainstay of the

bourgeois system.

Yet

the Israelis in charge of Aliya hesitate to openly

and

a

capitalist,

frantically cry out the danger.

The

situation

is

even sadder

where the American Jew

refuses,

in the

United States,

even more than the

Latin American, to see the danger and where the wealthy

Establishment, which pours so reacts with great hostility to

emergency Aliya. (Surely

much money

into Israel,

any mention of the need for

this

is

the reason

why

the

Zionist Congress in 1972 refused to allow the subject to

be broached. Surely

it

was not because the

Israelis there

OUR CHALLENGE did not wish to hear about delegates

— who

it,

122

but because the American

hold the purse strings— were adamant

in their refusal).

Yet the danger

is

a very real one.

American Jews (once again the

figure) stand in real

danger of a growing wave of Jew-hatred that, with all is

its

Six million

in

a country

democratic past and history of freedom,

a cruel and violent society.

It

is

a country that has

been relatively free of the Old World clashes between

groups because

until recently

it

had a vast frontier that

gave opportunity and employment to those there.

For the most

Jew

who came

part, the competition that bred the

Europe was not felt in this young country that allowed expansion and opportunity. But hatred for the

in

The

American years, apparently so free of overt Jew-hatred, were an illusion. There were two major reasons for this illusion, both of which are no longer valid. things have changed.

The with

its

terrible

past twenty-five

Holocaust that shocked the world

horrors thirty years ago created a temporary

embargo on anti-Semitism. The Jew buys the favor of the world with his bodies, and the destruction of six million Jews made the anti-Semite a temporary pariah. Added to this was the unprecedented economic boom that brought the good life to America and allowed it

to

wallow

in automobiles, private

homes,

full

employ-

ment, and consumer luxuries undreamed of before. Anti-Semites have slim pickings during good times:

new automobile in the garage hater. The guilt of Auschwitz

a steak in the broiler and a dilute the appeal of the

The Chosen State: The Jew Without

123

and the good economic times saw anti-Semitism arrested, but not eliminated. But today both these factors, have

undergone fundamental change and no longer serve as a barrier to the resurgence of virulent Jew-hatred.

The

of Auschwitz

guilt

is

gone.

Time and

the

of Israel in battle have enabled the gentile

victories

to rid himself of his albatross.

days of economic

boom

On

the other hand, the

have ended for the United States

and good sounds of ugliness and danger. America is today a troubled land, torn by racial passions and hatreds. We find white pitted against the

life

has been replaced by one that has

black in anger over the busing of children to achieve integration, violence over changing

neighborhoods and

housing patterns, competition for blue-collar and low-

and fighting between the armed forces. The fact that

white-collar jobs, tension

level

races in schools

and

in

not burning or that progress has been

cities are

minorities fools only the foolish.

taking over the

them

cities intact

like the plague,

Today

extremists are

as the middle class flees

And who

will

and escalated blamed for all this be

Jew, whose presence in the so prominent?

Who,

from

made demands

while progress that has been

leads only to rising expectations for more.

made by

if

civil rights

if

not the

movement was

not the liberal Jew, will be the

major target of embittered masses of Americans?

Then Vietnam

Who

—and

will

deaths?

there

is

let

the defeat of the United States in there be

no mistake,

it

is

a defeat.

be blamed for the humiliation and the needless

Who

will

be saddled with the myth of a war

OUR CHALLENGE that might have been

won

if

124

not for “the stab in the

back?” The war that has poisoned America and

split

into hostile camps, that has embittered the military

maligned armed forces leadership,

will

it

and

be blamed on the

Jew who, again, was so prominent in opposition to the war. Long after Americans have forgotten the names of McGovern and McCarthy they will remember Rubin and Hoffman, and above all Kissinger. As Weimar fell before a legend of traitors at home so is there a new myth being woven at this moment. Both have the same central villain

—the Jew.

The general hostility of Middle America to the radiand its opposition to their long-cherished values

cal Left will

once again lead to

hostility against those

who

are

looked upon as the destroyers of the land. Once again, the prominence of

and attack the

some Jews

flag, the office

mean so much to a movement from the middle to the

things that lead to

movements which mock of the presidency, and the the simple American will

in

radical Right

and to bitter hatred of Jews as a whole. The frustration of the average American as he watches social, moral, and ethical values that he has long cherished, being mocked and changed is evident to all. The gap between himself and his children, the spread of pornography and the change in sexual standards, anger and frighten him. Once again he seeks a way to go back to what he considers standards of decency. Once again he yearns for people who will give him permanent values.

Once again he seeks

to lash out at those

who

he

believes have been responsible for the social revolution.

Once again

his target

is

the Jew.

.

The Chosen State: The Jew Without

And on

125

top of the racial, political, social, and

psychological problems there comes the spark that could

powder keg upon which we sit. The land of economic colossus, is suddenly shaken. America is confronted with millions of unemployed and an untold number of underemployed. Urban

set off the

the mighty dollar, the

areas, already dying as welfare clients

payments and the less

revenue,

flight

demand

higher

of the middle class dictates

become centers

for joblessness that breed a

staggering hate. At the same time, inflation continues to eat in

away

at the dollar

and the lower middle

class

watch

agonized impotence as their savings are wasted away.

For the

first

time in a quarter century large numbers

of people face the loss of the

good

life

they have

known

Such people are dangerous for they will not coin^to jerms .with po verty t hey will sooner turn to demagogues and.rackts-who will promise them the good life in return for their liberties and at the price of the for so. long.

;

^

scapeg^^JL^he J And those demagogues,

haters,

and

fgcist,§

are to

be found in the United States in abundance. Forget

numbers at present. Consider rather their recent growth and their capacity to grow tremendously in an era of violence, frustration, anger, bitterness, fear, and hate. These are the elements that are present in American society today and upon which the haters feed. They speak openly of gas chambers and of eliminating Jews. They mean it, and no one knows if they can really be stopped if conditions become ripe. their

In the face of this a threat to six million Jews, the

State of Israel must disregard

all

protests

and make

OUR CHALLENGE

126

plans for a mass emergency Aliya and any other steps that are necessary. This too

is

part of

its

responsibility

as the trustee of the Jewish people.

There

is

another area where the existence of

Israel

as a Jewish state calls for re-examination and intro-

When

spection.

the idea of political Zionism flashed

when a Jewish home in

across European Jewry’s horizon and

Jewish

settlers

came

to build

the the

first

Land

of Israel (then misnamed Palestine), they found a desolate,

destroyed, and ravaged land. But they did not find

an empty land. They found tens of thousands of Arabs, many of whose families dated back generations. It was these indigenous inhabitants that Zionism, theory and ” We have practitioners, greeted with “Anv banv artza come home! To the astonished Arab’s question (that would grow louder and angrier with the passage of time and the

more Jews): “Who are you and what right do you have to come to this land?” the Zionists had a ready answer, one that was self-evident. “We are Jews,” they replied, “and this is the land of our fathers to which we have come home.” There was never the slightest doubt over this answer. The Jews were coming to this strange land by right because it was the home of the Jews and each and every Jew had a G-d-giVen, historic right that no one could influx of

—

deny.

No one, it When the the very

first

seems, except other Jews. State of Israel

things

it

came

into being,

did was to codify

its

among

right to exist.

The Law of Return! The law that underlined for our times the realization of the vision: “And may our eyes behold

The Chosen State: The Jew Without thy return to Zion

.

.

.”

The Law of Return

that

127

uncom-

promisingly gave each and every Jew the unmistakable

and unshakable right to return Home. Not just “some” Jews and not just “good” Jews. Not just “respectable” Jews and not just religious or Marxist or cultured or “acceptable” Jews. Just Jews. Including the bad, the criminal, the^liarn^ful, the dis-

graced the Law

th^Jews

whom

G-d made. That is what of Return once spoke of because it had to. For to deny one Jew the right to entry was to deny

—

the entire raison d’etre of Zionism, to falsify the entire

claim of those

who came

into a land inhabited

by Arabs.

what has happened, as under the is and the diplomats, the Law of Return has become the Law of Quasi Return, of return for some and of rejection for others. The fact is that today there are many Jews who can be, and have been, barred from Yet that

politicians

entering the Jewish state, have been ejected after entry,

—

even extradited.

To always

be sure, there are rational reasons given. There “Israel

are.

Israel, as

a

member

international

criminals to

cannot be a haven for criminals. of the

obligations

mock

community of

and

cannot

nations, has

allow

foreign

the law of the state in the knowledge

that they can always flee here. Israel cannot allow in

people with criminal records

who

will ‘endanger’ the

state.”

And

so Israel turns

away

all

kinds of Jews declared

—

The Jewish state for all desirable Jews. This is what happens when politicians and diplomats begin to take themselves seriously, when an ideal

to be undesirable.

begins to take a back seat to “international consider-

OUR CHALLENGE ations.”

When

the

Land of

Israel

128

descends into the

State of Israel.

The right of a State of Israel to exist is dependent upon the right of the Jew to a Land of Israel. The state can do nothing in denegration of the imperatives of the land. And if the decree of the Land of Israel through the Jewish heritage is that every Jew hasja right to enter > and live there, then no Knesset and no state can do any- thing to contradict that edict.

Here we have one more example of the corruption of the true meaning of the State of Israel vis-a-vis the

Jewish people. Instead of an affirmation of the Jewish people as an indivisible nation with each and every Jew

from the Jewish state, we find that there are indeed “Jews” and “Israelis.” The criminal born in Tel Aviv is not deported from Israel, but the one * who tries to enter the land from Chicago is. A 72-year-old - “foreign” criminal becomes a “danger to the state,” but a native-born Communist whose allegiance is to Moscow is not. A “foreign” Jew who is deemed “undesirable” cannot live in the Land of Israel but hundreds - of thousands of Arabs can. Maybe this is good western, entitled to the

~

same

liberal thinking,

—but

it is

rights

proper democratic, nation-state logic

terrible

Judaism. This

the State of Israel loses it

forgets that

it

came

Jewish people, that

-

This

is

it

its

is

way

what happens when in the world,

when

into being as the servant of the is

the latter’s agent and trustee.

Israel with the first rot of assimilation

upon

it.

do not suggest that there is an easy answer to Jewish criminals coming to Israel to seek safety from punishment. I am sure that, given a little effort, “a Jew I

The Chosen State: The Jew Without finds a solution.” If

we

are

unhappy with the entering

Jewish criminal or undesirable, him, even hang him. But

And above

port him.

let

129

us punish him,

let

jail

us not bar his entry or de-

all, let

us not

commit

that

most

abominable and un-Jewish of crimes, extradition to a foreign, non-Jewish state. We have had enough disexamples of

illusioning

Israeli

cooperation with foreign

gentiles in the matter of Jewish criminals, including those

whose “crimes” consist of attacking the Soviets or Arabs on behalf of Jews.

Would such a new policy cause us difficulties in the community of nations? Perhaps. Would it cause uncomfortable moments for the Foreign Minister? It might very well. No matter. The Jewish state did not come into being to make life easier for the Jewish Foreign Minister (and let us always remember that he is the Jewish foreign minister). Israel came into being on behalf of Jews, all the world’s Jews, and not to worry over “What will the nations say?”

Let the Israeli government

know and

let

us, the

and particularly the most fortunate of all people, those who were born here, know also. The Land of Israel is not the province of the Israeli alone. It belongs to each and every Jew, and each and every Jew has a right to come here, to speak up or down, for or against. There are no Israelis and Jews there are citizens of Israel

—

only Jews.

And tention

let

every

Jew

in Israel

and who bellows

who

forth, “I

am

rejects this

an

Israeli,

connot a

Jew” know that he is a thief. For such a man has indeed from the Arabs who lived here before he

stolen this land

OUR CHALLENGE or his father arrived. the Arabs that this

is

It

was not

as Israelis that

we

130

told

our land, that we have come home.

was only as Jews, as the descendants of those who had wandered through Exile never forgetting the dream of Zion, and those descendants in turn were the descendants of those who had once lived in Zion. As Jews we have all rights in this land. As people who reject Jewishness and create an “Israeliness,” we have nothing. We are It

indeed thieves.

The Jew is first

in

America

is first

a Jew. The Jew in Israel

a Jew. Both the one in America and the one in the

Land who deny this are stricken with the same guilt mentality and inferiority complex. They both seek to escape from their unique and difficult heritage. Yet there is no escape from the truth of one Jewish people and the one state which is their home and which owes them inseparable support just as it demands from them inseparable obligation.

We

are grappling here with the questions:

What

the purpose of Zionism’s creation of a Jewish State?

is

Why

does the State of Israel exist? Depending on the answers

one

gives, he will create a certain kind of state.

is so that the Jews might save from anti-Semitism, might “normalize” themselves and be as other peoples and states, there will certainly emerge a very definite kind of state. It will, indeed, be like all others and conform to the international game. It will look upon itself as sovereign, committed to the “good” of the state and its citi-

If

the reason given

themselves

zens, loyal to the western concept of democracy, of

the sovereignty

and exclusiveness of the

state

and the

— The Chosen State: The Jew Without citizens within

of

with

it,

In

all nationalities.

itself

all

that this implies for

many

crucial areas

it

its

131

citizens

will separate

from the non-Israeli Jew, as we have seen, and it diplomatic and political permutations and

will follow

combinations

consequences

with

that

are

often

at

variance with the traditional concept of a single, unified

Jewish people.

A “normal” state, one that is like other nations, cannot think in terms of protecting Jews or other states. will

not allow

The

democratic ideal Christian mission

are citizens

community harbor Jewish criminals, and the

to

it

who

rules of the international

will

not tolerate the banning of a

— in the end

on intermarriage must

it

will decree that a

ban

also be laid aside. Surely,

obligation to the Israeli Christian or

Muslim

will

its

come

before any duty to a “foreign” Jew. Certainly, fear

of interfering in the internal affairs of another state if it is a friendly one and even more especially one whose help and support we need will prevent

especially if it is

—

the “normal” state

from making statements or carry-

ing on activities concerning Jewish citizens of that state.

what is good for the state will take precedence over what is good for the universal Jewish people. But if one looks at the raison d’etre for a Jewish state from a Jewish standpoint; if one sees it within the context of its role in the total Jewish scheme of life; if Certainly,

one looks upon

it

as a tool for Jewish existence, Jewish

and Jewish heritage, to aid Jews in need in the Galut and to serve as the place where all Jews can identity,

lead a full Jewish

life;

as a servant of the Jewish people

then one creates a different kind of

state.

OUR CHALLENGE Then one

postulates a State of Israel in the service

of world Jewry, which bases for

all

its

on what is good and those without.

policies

Jews, those within the state

Then one

132

describes a state that

is

chained to the great

foundation of Jewish foundations, Ahavat Yisroel, the love for each

What

is

and every Jew. Ahavat Yisroel?

How

does one define

it

how does one attain it? come down to us of the Yom Kippur

and, more important,

The

story has

when, with the day drawing to a close and the

fast

him weak and drawn, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdishev rose and spoke to his Maker:

leaving

G-d of Abraham Isaac and Jacob you constantly admonish us to walk in your footsteps but why do you not once in a while cleave to some of our ways? When a Jew accidentally lets slip his tefillin (phylacteries) from his hand, he hastens to pick them up, kisses them tenderly, and fasts that day, such is his love for your ,

,

,

,

,

,

tefillin.

You, however, who, as our rabbis

tell us,

wear

that read, “And who is like thy people Israel, one nation on earth,” have taken that tefillin, that people of Israel, and cast them to the earth, thrown them tefillin

down from

And

and happiness and persecution.

the great pinnacle offreedom

they once knew, to the dust of exile

there they have lain for close to two thousand

and you do not even bother to lift them up to kiss them or to fast over them. If you will forgive your tefillin and pick them up and forgive them, it is well.

years

The Chosen State: The Jew Without But

if

not

,

I will be forced to

Almighty dons improper

And

tell

133

the world that the

tefillin.

the Hasidic legend continues that these words

of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak reached up to the very Throne of

One blessed be he, himself, who “You have won, my son Levi Yitzchak.

Glory, to the Holy

smiled and said, I

them as you have spoken. This is Ahavat Yisroel from one who

forgive

lived

it.

And we can

only sadly recognize

its

felt

it

and

magnificence

and beauty as we look at our orphaned generation and behold its absence. One can appreciate light only after being trapped in Stygian darkness. six million died

and news of the extermination

camps emerged before a

horrified Jewish world, our

While

Jewish leadership, which did indeed love and care for Jews, nevertheless did not love them enough.

It

did

not possess that burning passion and feeling heart that

gave a sense of urgency and immediacy to their mission.

How

we were from the heights of a Levi Yitzchak! It is not that we failed to anticipate their destruction. It was worse. When they cried out, we were paralyzed, and when they sought our help, we were frozen far

into that worst of all postures, impotency.

The

failure of

world Jewry to do for their

own

brothers and sisters threatened with extermination what they were prepared to do in later years for strange causes and peoples

Jewish soul.

We

is

all

kinds of

a permanent stain on the

can never say, with any degree of

Yadeinu lo shafchu et ha-dam ha-ze (“Our hands have not had a share in the shedding of this blood”).

honesty,

OUR CHALLENGE This

134

what happens when one does not possess

is

Ahavat Yisroel to the degree that it pushes, drives, obsesses, and gives no rest to the Jew as long as another Jew needs him. The Holocaust is the prime example, in our times, of lack of Ahavat Yisroel. For Ahavat Yisroel is the understanding that there is one Jewish people, indivisible and eternal, with each and every Jew a permanent part of it and with duty to people as a cornerstone of personal Jewish existence.

To

love the Jewish brother

and with is

all

and

your soul and with

sister all

with

all

your heart

your means. And what

Jew as an individual is true for the Jewish must learn Ahavat Yisroel and practice it. Both individual Jew and Jewish state must believe

true for the

state. It, too,

and practice that the Jewish people are not only a unique people but a separate people with total rejection of the

Marxist

call for class struggle that divides the

into warring ish

worker

camps and decrees

lies

employer. This

nation

that the fate of the Jew-

with the gentile worker against the Jewish is

philosophy that

a philosophy of the Galut, the Exile, a

is

un-Jewish and that must be uprooted

from the Jewish mind. Jewish problems can be solved only within a Jewish framework, and the Jewish worker and employer are part of the separate and unique Jewish nation. All Jews are brothers and the non-Jew is apart

and separate from

this relationship.

And

let it

be shouted

bound by ties to the Jew in the Galut that are infinitely greater and incomparable to anything that he holds in common with the non-Jew who is an Israeli citizen. This is the honest meaning of “Thou hast chosen us from all the peoples” and “He

forth that the

Jew

in Israel

is

The Chosen State: The Jew Without

who

separates

Israel

principle the policies

from the nations.” Upon and programs of a Jewish

135

this

state

must be based. Both Jew and Jewish state must learn that, for them, there are no permanent allies among the non-Jews. The states must realize that, at best, we can expect from the

non-Jew only short-range support, a support based on the self-interest of the parties to the relationship. At no time can this short-range, temporary support be a moral or a logical reason for betraying or ignoring

Both Jew and Jewish in all

formulating policies, times

is:

Is it

good

Jewish

interests.

must understand that the measuring rod to be used at state

for the Jews?

time to stop

It is

being more Catholic than the Pope and to understand

on questions of foreign policy it is not our “fraternal with the Third World or our efforts to curry favor with the revolutionary Left that must dictate our policies but, simply, whether it is good for the Jews. There can be no dichotomy, no division of loyalties between Judaism and any other “ism.” If the socialist Jew finds it difficult that

ties”

to support the United States, interests, that

is

his

when that

problem.

support for anything

A

is

vital to

Jewish

good Jew asks only

will aid the

if

Jew. Our alliances in

the world must be based not only

on the

principle of

kabdehu v chashdehu (“respect but suspect”) but also on our pragmatic ability to back any (except the truly evil and immoral) state whose interests coincide with our own at that moment.

—

It

is

Jewish interests that come

socialist or capitalist ones. It is the is

the touchstone, not Third

first

for Jews, not

Jewish people that

World or Fourth World, ad

OUR CHALLENGE infinitum.

Our

loyalties lie neither with

Peking nor Washington. They

lie

136

Moscow nor

with the universal

Jewish people. The Jewish government of the Jewish state within the

Land of

Israel is the servant of

Jewry, just as world Jewry

is

world

obligated to support,

and live within its own state. The policies of that government must be based on this hypothesis. Israel’s policy, domestic and foreign, must be one strive for,

that rejects the too-relevant ghetto mentality that always

looks over

its

diplomatic shoulder to see “what the

nations will say.”

It

must be a policy that

is

dynamic,

tough, even “brazen,” seeking not to impress people or

buy friendship with cautious steps, but to make it do whatever is necessary for its people, the Jewish people. It must be one that rejects the siren call of “practicality” and “reality” over vision and ideal. It is time that we learned that, in the end,

to

clear to the world that Israel will

the “practical” policy that betrays idealistic vision proves to be impractical, while the “impractical” people

and

policies of bold imagination are the only practical ones.

when we understand and act upon the understanding that the Land of Israel (and the state It

within

is

only

it) is

ests, that

the trustee

we

and agent of world Jewish

will cease betraying

inter-

Zionism, the reason

for being of the State of Israel, the true relationship

between the Jewish

Ahavat Yisroel as

How do

state

and the Jewish people, and

well.

a Jewish people and state express their

uniqueness, their Jewishness? by their external character alone?

No, there

is

more. There are unique ideas

in

Judaism, unique ways of looking at problems, unique

The Chosen State: The Jew Without

137

ways of deciding how to behave and how to react. If a people and state are truly Jewish, their standards and their value judgments will be Jewish ones, nothing else. Whether a thing is right or wrong, whether it should be

done or not done,

said or not said, will be decided not by

western or eastern, liberal or conservative, socialist or capitalist,

democratic or autocratic standards,

but by

Jewish ones. In the end, true faith in the state as the beginning

of the redemption

Few

is

lacking even

are there, indeed,

“logical,”

who

“practical,”

problems facing

Israel.

and

among

the religious.

up the approach to

are prepared to give “rational”

Fearful of world opinion, of

numbers, of armies, and of diplomatic pressures, nearly all

of us have fallen prey to a fear that limits our actions,

that drives us

from the way of boldness and truth

— from

Jewish reactions. Will the Americans approve? Will the Russians be

angry? Will the Christian world react? Will Africans, Asians, and the United Nations the questions that

many

make up

condemn? These

are

the Galut mentality of too

and that drive government and politicians from doing and not doing things according to

in Israel

to shrink

Jewish values.

The cornerstone of Jewish foreign policy must be the knowledge and faith that the Jewish people have a divine destiny that cannot be denied and that the State of Israel is the culmination of that destiny. It must be based on the realization that our G-d is the G-d of history and it is

If

within his hands that the fate of nations

is

decided.

a decision must be taken that affects the lives of the

OUR CHALLENGE Jewish people, the future of their

state,

138

or the destiny of

both, that decision must be a bold one that calls for both sacrifice

ing faith

and

and strength of arms as well as a deep and abidthat so long as the Jew remains true to his people

destiny, he can never be defeated. It is

who

only people

lack such a faith

who become

and diplomats, who shrink from the seemingly difficult, and who find refuge in “logic” and “reason.” It is only Jews of little or no faith who decide to forego a pre-emptive strike that would save the lives of hundreds of Jewish soldiers, with the argument that the political climate forces Israel to moderate its policy for fear of what the world will say and do. Jewish foreign policy must never be built upon the same transient and finite assumptions of others. We are not a “natural” people but a G-dly one and our belief in the Jewish G-d of history must create within us a faith in the inevitable victory of the Jew who remains politicans

faithful to his destiny.

We

must cease fearing sanctions and isolation in the world community for it is not from the world community that salvation will come. We must stop measuring our strength in terms of numbers or quality, for Israel is

saved not through

What

is

are a people to

overcome

ish

way of

is

whose G-d all

man

but through infinite G-d.

courage and assurance that we

and might only we follow the Jew-

will give us strength

our enemies

—

if

What we need is true that we are on the threshWhat we need is to believe

action and reaction.

— not mere

belief

finite

needed

lip service

old of the final liberation.

—

that the events of our time are indeed miracles that

The Chosen State: The Jew Without herald a redemption that no one

or

army

—can ever stem.

It is

on earth

139

— nation, group,

only with the deeply

felt

may come with chariots and these we shall invoke the name of the Eternal, we shall ignore the “logical” way of the

belief that “these

with horses but

our G-d” that

diplomats and remain true to the one continuous path of

Ahavat

Yisroel,

the doing of whatever

to help our fellow Jews,

the world

may

say.

is

necessary

and ourselves regardless of what

6 The Chosen State: The Jew Within Where

Ahavat Yisroel needed more than inside the State of Israel? Where more than here do we need more dialogue, tolerance, understanding, love, and comis

passion for those

We that,

among

us?

how sad it is who have never

speak of the social gap and yet

on the one hand, there are those

entered a poverty neighborhood or the problems of the stricken

who pay

lip service to

and then soothe

their con-

sciences by repeating the easy formula that there

is

not

The Chosen State: The Jew Within

141

enough money for both defense and poverty. And on the other hand are those who are either too simple to understand or too demagogic to want to allow others to understand the terrible complexity of the problem and who wallow in cynical charges of racism and callous communal hatred. Both camps are sitting on a powder keg, the one believing it will somehow disappear, thus allowing them to continue to enjoy the good life, the other, in full knowledge if its existence, playing with lighted matches.

The need of Israel

is

to allocate funds to the

obvious. Everyone

few do anything about It

is

poor and deprived

knows and

talks

about

it;

it.

made to amounts of funds to fight poverty, to create and to cater to the basic needs of the deprived. not true that all-out efforts have been

raise large

schools,

They have

certainly not been presented to the world Jew-

ish public

with the same earnestness and sense of urgency

as drives for warplanes.

No

real sense of

emergency has

been conveyed to the wealthy Jewish communities of the world.

Nor have

the Jews of the world given

might possibly be expected to

give.

One can

all

that they

indeed stand

sums of money given by western Jews to the various appeals from Israel, but only when one looks upon them from the basis of relativity. Yes, relative to the gentile the Jew gives an extraordinary amount of money to charity and to Israel. Yes, relative to the standard of living in Israel, a man who gives what the American or South African or Swiss Jew gives, does indeed deserve to be praised. But when one considers how many Jews in the West have never given at all, and in

awe

at the vast

OUR CHALLENGE what a

142

relatively small percentage of their fortune so

many have

and that the western Jew really has no idea of the extent of the poverty in Israel and its given,

explosive implications

—then

quite a different picture

emerges.

More money, much more money, could be gotten from world Jewry if the appeal were made in the form of a separate emergency fund or surcharge on the regular

The

done and that a sense of urgency has not been communicated to world Jewry by the government of Israel. The need to allocate vast funds for the needy is obvious, yet little more than little has been done to enlist the vast resources of world Jewry. Similarly, to castigate the government for its relative contribution.

pity

is

that this has not been

indifference to the need to eliminate waste, bureaucratic rot, scandals,

to

all

and corruption

but the government.

is

also obvious

Few have any

real idea

what

the scandals in governmental circles have cost the state

money

that could

— —

and should be used for bridging the

social gap.

As one who loves his Land of Israel deeply, I write these words with pain. It is utterly irrelevant that one can find the same waste and corruption, or worse, in other countries. I do not want to see it in my land. Nor is this criticism intended to do anything but convince the Jew of the Land to make things better and the Jew of the Exile to come here and create a better state. Mine is not the criticism of the spies of Canaan but of the rabbis who say: “Any love that is not accompanied by criticism is

not real love.”

The Chosen State: The Jew Within

We

much

have seen too

ference to public opinion in into scandals

and

143

of the government’s indifunwillingness to delve

its

to punish the

Labor Party

activists

connected with them. This indifference stems from the

knowledge that on election day the public will put the Labor Party back in office as they have done every time since the beginning of the state and for certain

And

years before that.

here

is

a danger that we must

face frankly.

No democracy

phenomenon of unbroken in itself

world can “boast” of such a

in the

political

power.

It

carries with-

a threat to the democracy of Israel that cannot

be overestimated.

If,

as

Lord Acton

said,

and absolute power corrupts absolutely, danger of

power corrupts we have a clear

this in Israel.

For absolute power, along with the absolute certainty that

it

will continue, leads to

an absolute arrogance and

corruption that will not end until the individuals con-

cerned

know

that they can be

to a determination

on

thrown

out.

their part not to be

It

also leads

thrown

out,

so that they are prepared to do immoral things in order

Nowhere is this desire to preserve power at all costs seen more clearly than in the root cause of the terrible social and communal to assure their continued stay in power.

gap that everyone deplores. While it is true that proverty

is

a tragedy and must

be fought, this poverty cannot be looked at outside of the total context in

cause of the heaval,

which

it

emerged. Poverty

communal gap or

materialist values,

standards that

come

in

its

is

not the root

of the crime, social up-

and destruction of moral wake. All the things that we

OUR CHALLENGE see

growing

tution,

the

in the poverty areas of Israel

the

thievery,

from poverty

hooliganism

—the prosti-

—do

not arise

They stem from a deep

itself.

144

loss of

moral and social values, values that were held by Jews when they arrived here and which were torn from

them by

government design. The “sophistiand Rehavya who look down the “uncultured” Sephardim must never

deliberate

cates” in north Tel Aviv their noses at

be allowed to forget that the Jews of the East came here with a deep and abiding culture— Judaism.

Have we already forgotten the Yemenite children, or did we ever want to know about them? When Mapai officials and Mapam camp followers cry out warnings against “fascism,” does anyone stop to ask what could have been worse than the actions of the government and the the

Labor power structure in uprooting the Judaism of young Jews of Yemen, Morocco, and Iraq? When a

certain individual, later a minister in the government,

speaks about religious coercion, his role as

who reminds him

head of Youth Aliyah

in

of

breaking solemn

promises to religious parents and sending children with

peyot (earlocks) to secular centers where the peyot and everything they represented disappeared within months?

The

political

men and women

had a stranglehold on power

of Labor,

who have

Land of

Israel for

in the

decades, robbed Jewish children of their Jewish tradition

by sending them to institutions

and their

if

not antireligious,

They threatened religious of jobs and other favors unless they

schools.

immigrants with loss registered

irreligious,

children

in

irreligious

schools.

All

The Chosen State: The Jew Within

145

because of their fear that religious children would grow

and throw Labor out of power. This was excuse enough for snatching their souls from them. Was a more immoral act ever committed by any Right Wing group in the Land? I do not question the fact that into religious voters

power brokers of Mapai love the state; I only say that they love their party and their power more. the

Do we

wish to rectify the tragedy of the

communal

gap, crime, and the erosion of social and moral values?

Do we wish to prevent the “Dizengoffization” of Israel? Do we want to return Jews to what the “founding and halutziut? And do fight poverty? The fight

fathers” called values of sacrifice

we, at the same time, wish to

cannot be that

is

won

with

money alone.

It is

not lack of money

the source of the evil here but the lack of values,

from the Eastern Jews by Mapai and Mapam politicians and never replaced. I do not totally denigrate the value of moadanim, children’s recreation centers. But we need only look to the United States for a prime example of the longrange failure of such institutions. The teenager who is lacking in values and an understanding of what is really important in this world will soon grow bored with chess and football and basketball and painting. The streets have a lure for the valueless. All the Mapai brand of ideology and all the Mapam’s Borochovian recitations cannot capture them either. What are needed are real values, deep values, Jewish values that give them a the values that were ripped

reason for staying here rather than emigrating to America,

Canada, or Australia where there

is

more money

to be

OUR CHALLENGE made. (And of

man and

capitalist

By

is

146

not material happiness the ultimate desire

his rightful goal, as enunciated

by both the

and communist thinkers of the world?) means, give the deprived their sports centers

all

money

them out of the slums. But

and

raise

end,

no values youth with money in its become antisocial also. See the Jewish New of the West and the growing tragedy of the rootless if

pocket Left

to get

in the

there are

will

and confused bnai tovim, affluent youth, of Israel. There is hunger in the slums of Israel and it must be relieved. We must give funds for the physical hunger but at least as

What

much energy

to the spiritual hunger.

Labor did to the Sephardim them of the only thing that gave them a feeling of self-respect and self-pride. They could not boast of secular education or wealth, but they came here with the proud knowledge that they and their fathers had cleaved to their Jewish heritage and faith through persecution and degradation. They knew that theirs was the truth and this filled their hearts with the pride of knowing that an immense challenge had been faced and met. When the kibbutznikim and the social workers told them that all their tradition was outdated, they were stripped naked. They had nothing left. Except self-contempt and self-hatred. A person who does not like himself likes no one else.

was

the politicians of

to strip

A person who is a self-hater hates the whole world. And let

us not underestimate the hatred of the thousands of

Sephardim for Askenazim. We delude ourselves because it is pleasanter to do so. We think that the Israeli Black Panthers represent only a tiny, insignificant fringe group.

The Chosen State: The Jew Within Their numbers are indeed small, but

if

147

anyone believes

that their thinking does not in large measure mirror the

thinking of vast numbers of Eastern Jews, he fools himself.

What

the Panthers say,

many

others think.

Panthers have had the audacity to break the silence they will be followed by

many

The and

others.

We

must do more than give money to the poor of Israel, although that in itself is a matter of the most extreme urgency. We must make the deprived and partic-

—

Sephardim believe that someone cares that we care. He who is deprived and hopeless is convinced that no one cares about him. If he has an inferiority complex he is convinced of this. Half of the mitzva of raising up a brother in need is the simple task of letting him know that someone cares. And we must give the physically and spiritually deprived Sephardic Jew new pride and respect. We must give him a belief in himself, and that can be only done by restoring his values and goals. The government has a clear duty to establish “value centers” ularly the

in the deprived areas and,

I

may

add, their success will

lead the parents of the bnai tovim to plead for the same.

The

is not money, but the bitter opLabor power structure. Just as in the case of the revamping of the educational curriculum, here too the Labor people know exactly what is needed for the good of the youth and the state. But they also clearly fear that what is good for the State of Israel is not good for the state of Labor and Labor takes precedence. I cannot overemphasize the breakdown in Jewish values and the disaster it has brought to our youth, both affluent and deprived. In this respect the rootless-

greatest obstacle

position of the

—

OUR CHALLENGE ness, the sense of lack of purpose, the

search for

some meaning

to

life, is little

148

boredom, the

different

among

the various classes of Israel. Aside from a large per-

centage (though not

all)

of the religious youth, the over-

whelming majority of Israeli youth is in a state of limbo, not sure what life is about. There is an intense hunger for material things on the part of those who have not attained wealth and a similar hunger for something else on the part of those who have attained it. Both share the feeling that they do not like what they have; both emerge dissatisfied and ever more rebellious and angry. The less affluent are filled with nonvalues or with sick, western, materialistic ones. There is an abnormal worship of the American golden calf, and everything American is slavishly copied. The hunger for pleasure, for sex, for drugs, for discotheques, for cars, for escape to the affluent

West where they can make money,

leads

to a frustration that erupts into crime, hard violence,

sadism, and brutality, a desire to lash out at everyone,

and jealousy and hatred of those who possess what they want.

The more

affluent have already learned the lesson

man does not live either by bread or by cake, and they search for their own meaning to life. They escape from

that

boredom through drugs and radical politics. They become devotees of the political slogan, the irrational philosophy. They despise their parents, whose life they see as vapid and empty and who cannot give them the answers they want. A culture that is based on materialism, whether covert or overt,

is

destined to rot

away the soul which cannot live within such a world. And so, whether the purpose of life is girls and cars, or study

The Chosen State: The Jew Within

149

become a physician and have a nice home, eventually the gnawing boredom and lack of

in the university to

purpose drives This today. is

is

man

spiritually

the lesson of

What

mad.

Rome and

of the western world

has afflicted America and Britain for years

upon us and we have already begun

results.

But

it

to see

its

terrible

has only begun. Given a recession or a

and rootlessness could explode into a disastrous upheaval. Those who threw away the discipline and meaningfulness of Jewish values must be prepared to pay in the usual way, by the natural true crisis, all the materialism

process of eating the fruits of the seeds they themselves

have sown.

And Is

is

there only a socio-economic

there not also a terrible

communal gap?

gap between observant and

Jew that threatens no less than the other gap, a potential war of brothers? Let us make no mistake about it. The capacity for Jewish fraticide is a historical fact and few doubt that the Arab enemy, while a terrible curse, still has brought us some ironic measure of relief by postponing a potentially tragic clash of Jew against Jew. A war of Jewish brothers was a reality in the past and is a threat for the future. Never was there a more urgent time

secular

for

Jews to

rid themselves of their

time-honored, ancient

on a problem until the knife is at our throat. The time is now: the time has come to solve our problems before they become insoluble, or sol-

albatross, the inability to act

uble only at a terrible cost.

between the religious and the nonreligious has reached the danger point. Across a bridgeless chasm the two camps stare at each other with

The

precious

friction

little

dialogue and conversation.

On

both sides

OUR CHALLENGE there are suspicion

150

and mistrust and basic lack of under-

standing of the other’s point of view.

The

Jews and sees only that he wishes to circumscribe his freedom to do as he pleases. Because of the religious Jew, he cannot travel on a public conveyance in many cities on the Sabbath; cannot marry the girl of his choice (be she shiksa or not); cannot create the kind of free, western society that he reads about in the newspapers. He looks upon the Yeshiva secularist stares at the religious

who

exempt from army service as a draft dodger or an opponent of the state. He moves toward a position where the black kaftan of the Hasid instinctively makes him angry and resentful without his knowing why. His mind is filled with many false notions and concepts of Judaism: that a Jew, by halacha, is only a religious one; that a mamzer, bastard, is any child born out of wedlock and thus completely outside of the Jewish

student

is

—

community; that the Sabbath and kashrut and ritual purity are meaningless and reasonless relics of medievalism. The religious Jew stares at the secularist, his way of life,

his desecration of

Jewish values that to him, the

and precious, and considers the secularist to be a maliciously wicked person whose preconceived desire is to destroy Judaism and its practitioners. The whole governmental machinery becomes some sort of diabolical machine whose sole purpose is to crush the Judaism of our fathers. Marxist kibbutzim are peopled with atheistic sinners and the religious Jew must either fight them or have nothing to do with them. Where there is no dialogue there can be only misunderstanding. When people do not meet each other it is religious Jew, are holy

The Chosen State: The Jew Within easy for images and

And

so

is it

The

demons

to take the place of reality.

here.

secularist

who rarely comes into contact with the

Jew and never

religious

151

sits

with him for meaningful

discussion of religion, fails to understand that the ob-

Jew does not

servant

live

simply to

make

life difficult

He has no opportunity Jew explain that the Jewish people exists only because of and through Torah and that the survival or happiness of the state depend on the observance of the Law. That if we speak of the Defense Forces of Israel, then Jewish history has shown that while Jews do not depend upon miracles and there is

and oppressive for a fellow Jew. to listen to the religious

a desperate need for Zahal,

still,

the major defense

observance of mitzvot and the study of Torah.

And

is

so,

with the deepest respect and support for the armed

—

and learn to obtain divine defense for the Jewish state. The secularist rarely has the forces, yeshiva students sit

opportunity to hear the religious Jew say that his very desire to create a truly Jewish state

is

proof not only of

Judaism but for all Jews who live in would be easy enough not to care about how the secularist lives; it is a sign of love that one cares enough about a fellow Jew to try to make him cleave to his intense love for

the state.

his

It

heritage despite his lack of understanding of

its

importance.

To whose

be sure there are the few, the religious minority,

bitterness against the desecration of

Torah has

driven them to a point of unreasoning hatred of the secularist. this

But the secularist does not understand that

kind of mind just as easily, perhaps more easily,

OUR CHALLENGE

152

Jew who is not quite as ready to hate The kind of Jew who refuses to recognize the state, hates and despises the observant Zionist Jew even more than he hates the atheist Marxist one. Nor does hates the observant

the secular Jew.

the secularist understand what a minority of a minority this

group is within religious Jewry and how unacceptable

is its

point of view to religious Jews.

at

And

so he

makes

Jews with a few the very monent that he deplores the blaming of all

the grave error of equating

all religious

kibbutznikim for the sins of their few. This error can only be erased by the secularist’s being willing to

sit

down

with the religious Jew and hear his side of the argument a side, incidentally, which was the mainstream of Judaism for millennia.

Only

this dialogue will

allow the secularist to under-

stand the contention that the halacha the very air of the

Jew

— which has been

Sinai— has

since

at least the

very essence of a state

freedom

is its

in return for

greater good. That

right to limit the individual’s

what

many

same

That the

right to limit the individual that socialism has.

it

promises him

will

be a

individuals are unconvinced

of this greater good and thus lament the loss of their

freedom, but so long as the democratic majority decrees that

it

sees the logic of the “trade,” this remains the

rule of the land

and cannot be attacked as “coercive”

or “oppressive.” All laws of society are coercive in the sense that they force the individual to obey even

does not particularly care

to. All the state’s

pressive in the sense that they take

freedom to do anything sensible

man knows

I

would

when he

laws are op-

from me the delicious like to do. But any

that they are not oppressive in the

The Chosen State: The Jew Within pejorative sense of the word.

man

safer If

and

better

is

153

The price we pay for making

individual liberty.

Socialism can take

away man’s

right to

work

as

hard as he can, keep devil

all that he makes, and let the poor hang who was not as clever or as fortunate, none

of the “progressives” calls this coercive or oppressive. religion, in order to selfish person,

and

make man a more disciplined and less in order to obtain

what

it

be G-d’s divine intervention on behalf of the the

same

If

believes to state,

does

why should it be considered tyrannical? what we need and Ahavat Yisroel and to hear the other side. And this goes for

thing,

Dialogue a willingness

is

the religious Jew, too.

How

difficult

it

is

stand the mind of one

for one

who

who does

place one’s self in the shoes of a

believes to under-

not.

How

difficult to

man whose

training,

whose education, whose environment are so different. Is a kibbutznik of Hashomer Hatzair to be condemned because he never saw a pair of tefillin or a Torah scroll in his life until he joined the army? Is one who was subject to totally secular, or even atheist and Marxist indoctrination, wicked? How simplistic and how terribly un-Jewish to hold such views. Only the man who secretly wishes the majority to remain secular so that he

numbered among the few, the “elite,” upon the secularist as one who simply

will

left

be

either did not

receive a full, effective Jewish education or as

for whatever reason,

may

not look

one who,

the observance of the faith.

Not hatred and not pushing aside and not separate communities

will solve the religious-irreligious confict,

but an understanding of each side, a mature willingness

OUR CHALLENGE to

recognize

(even

that

when each

there

side

is

can

be

tion, that

honest differences

convinced that

that these differences need not stem

154

it

is

correct),

from wicked

inten-

compromises are necessary for the people and

state to survive.

What do of principle;

I

mean by compromises? Not on

Not

questions

that the religious should agree to

change a halacha for the sake of a nebulous peace. But that each side,

when pushing

quo, should realize just what

for a change in the status

noncompromisable and what had better be left alone. For the irreligious it is imperative to realize that on certain issues that affect the very heart and root of the Jewish definition there can be no compromise by religious Jews. No rabbi can be asked to twist or bend halacha no matter how important it may seem to the secularist. The religious understands that although Torah never changes, the times and tempers of the times do change and what a is

—

was willing to accept once, it may not be willing to accept now. That, in the end, it is impossible to force upon an unwilling majority that which it will not agree to. That certain areas, although of great importance, do not go to the heart of the definition of the Jew and if not pushed today can still be pushed at a later date when times and tempers change. That to push and win a battle at the wrong time is sometimes to lose the war later on. How sad that so many of the leaders of both camps are men who add little honor to their cause. Let us not judge the cause by the incompetence or pettiness of certain of its representatives. The main thing is for the Jews of the state who love their nation and land to society

The Chosen State: The Jew Within

155

understand that they cannot separate themselves from their Jewishness that

brought them back and that some

means must be found and can be found to live together. Bridges, dialogue, and Ahavat Yisroel are the burning needs of the hour. I do not say that the parties to dialogue will walk away from their conversation agreeing to agree. But when

one

sits

down

with another for a discussion of deep

and leaves agreeing to disagree, a major two have heard each other, understand that there is honesty and sincerity on both sides, and begin to see why the other side differs. Dialogue should leave the one who truly believes unshaken in his convictions, but with new compassion and insight for his opponents. In the end every Jew is a Jew no more or less than others. Good or bad, he is our brother and we love him.

differences

success has been achieved. For the

7 The Chosen State: Character and Personality If

the Jewish state

exists to serve

it

is

the receptacle of the Jewish people,

and to ingather

it,

is

created to reflect

Judaism and Jewishness in practice, then it must surely have a character and personality that is unmistakenly Jewish and leaves no room for doubt on that subject. It is not just a question of “religion,” and it is not only for the “religious” Jew to consider it as something vital and nonnegotiable. The very fabric and definition of the nation are involved, and every Jewish nationalist

The Chosen State: Character and Personality

157

must be concerned to see that the national identity not be contaminated by assimilation. If there are those who worry over the ruination of inanimate

so correctly

national treasures, such as forest, green spaces, and

beaches,

how much more should we

be concerned over

the ideological pollution of our national character.

The Jewish state must reflect the Jewish people and we must never lose sight of the definition of that

To speak

people. distinct

of a Jewish religion as something

from a Jewish nation or to speak of the possibility

of the absence of either concept pervert,

and

to

is

to misunderstand, to

deny the Jewish truth of the Jewish

people.

The Jewish people exists as a religio-nation and to be considered a Jew is to partake of both qualities. The single Jew is but a reflection of his whole people and he is what it is. The rules of the Jewish “game” have been set and although there may be those who do not like

it,

game

is

that

is

irrelevant. If the rules are

changed the

no longer the same. The Jewish people

subject to

the

whims of

alone of the relative few.

because of

its

cannot and

will

hest of even

the transitory majority,

A nation that has survived

iron discipline to

not change

not

is

its

its

let

only

definition of self

historical truth at the be-

an entire generation, which comes and goes

within the twinkling of a historical eye.

Thus the eternal fusion of religion and nation is what makes the specific uniqueness of the Jew, and one must not only reject but fight to the bitter end those who would impose the sanction of legal change on this definition. No body, no matter how prestigious or respected, can change the definition of a Jew.

None can.

OUR CHALLENGE

158

“Jew” upon a Christian, and none can separate nation from faith. None can define a Jew in any other way than the traditional, historical, by

bestow the

fiat,

title

And

religio-national way.

the Jewish state, as a mere

servant and receptacle of the Jewish people, can

more and no

less.

A Jew,

in the eyes of the

can be only that person

one

eternal definition:

is

who

fits

Jewish

do no state,

the historical

and

a Jew both in nationality and

religion.

One does not become

a

Jew or

leave off

becoming

a Jew through some personal whim. Jewishness

is

not

a game that one can stop playing when boredom or disillusion set in.

own

rules

It is

and where

not a

game

that one plays by his

decisions, such as

when

to start

and when to stop, are made by the individual player. Judaism is not a reward for being good and cannot be bestowed because of the good character of the individual, just as

cannot be taken away merely because of

it

obnoxious behavior to A Jew is one who

his

his people.

—

born of a Jewish mother this is the view of halacha that has been accepted from the days of Sinai until very recently. He can be a bad Jew in that he

is

a traitor to his people, turns his back on them,

is

or even actively works against them. Let us curse such a

man,

let

further

us

work

to stop his evil designs, let us even

— but there

is

one thing that

we cannot

cannot cast him out of the Jewish camp.

We

do.

must

suffer

any family striken by the presence midst of a son who has shamed and defiled

his presence like

within it.

By

its

go

We

his actions he

does not cease to be their son.

The Chosen State: Character and Personality

A Jew

159

who, having been born a gentile, chooses honestly, deeply, and sincerely to become a practicing

also one

is

and

faithful Jew.

But here there

is

a difference.

The son who was born to us is ours and we have no choice but to accept him and keep him regardless of his conduct. The stranger who comes out of the night and asks to become part of the family undergoes far greater and deeper inspection. His is not a right but a privilege, and he must pay for that privilege by adhering to the demands and conditions that we set for him. And the most basic of these is to be a practicing Jew who will add honor and respect to the family he claims to love and admire. Hardly an unreasonable demand. The Jewish people particularly in this age of unfaithful sons and daughters is hardly in great need of more unfaithfulness. The

— —

Jewish

nation

is

a people that hungers after

not

numbers: “For you are the It

is

among

the nations.”

is the dream of Judaism but and he who seeks entry into the unique and

not quantity that

quality,

chosen people his actions.

him

least

to

way of

No

come

is

asked to partake of that uniqueness by

one sought him out, no one pleaded with

into the Jewish tent; ours

the missionary.

We

welcome

is

all

not the hungry into the goodly

tents of Jacob, but the conditions are stiff

worthy may comply and It

is

and only the

join.

acceptance of halacha, Jewish practice, that

marks the distinctiveness of the Jew. This is the principle demand; this is how one is recognized as a Jew; this is what makes the Jew different from the man he

OUR CHALLENGE

160

was before. Not merely social justice, for while this is truly a worthy and noble ideal indeed, the essence of

—

man’s

and

life

—

it is

not specifically Jewish.

says: “I desire to

my

change

life

One who comes

and

my

people,”

does not merely go through some meaningless

ritual

and then continue in the same non-unique path as before, no matter how noble that path is. He makes a change. And that change comprises both the social justice that has been accepted by the gentiles and also the distinctiveness of the Jewish mitzva between man and G-d. The acceptance of halacha is the proof of the sincerity of the conversion.

The very

hesitation of the gentile to

ready a clear mark that he

is

do

this

the yoke of Jewishness. His refusal to accept the

is

al-

bow

not prepared to

to

manner

of conversion reflects his future refusal to accept other aspects of Jewishness.

The new Jew

worship the Jewish G-d, not

his

is

expected to

own wishes and

ideology

or even his personal view of that Jewish G-d.

Since time immemorial, halacha has declared just

who

is

a Jew and

there are cases, few

noble people

how one becomes and

who have

a Jew. Indeed,

far between, wherein sacrificed

much

good and

for the Jewish

people under the illusion that they were Jewish, have

been told that halacha decrees otherwise. tragedy? Only for the one steps that

will

who

Is

this

a

refuses to take the simple

bring him legally into the people he Is the good “Jew” who refuses undergo halachic conversion a tragic

claims to love so much.

on

principle to

figure? Hardly. right,

He

is

a stubborn figure and that

but Judaism survived

all

is

his

these years because

it

The Chosen State: Character and Personality

161

was more stubborn than those who would have destroyed it or changed it. It dare not bow to the will of any human being

lest

it

Those

lose all pretense of being divine. in the

Galut

who perform

conversions con-

trary to halacha are invariably of the school that twisted

Jewishness beyond recognition, that fought the concept of maximum Jewish nationalism, that perverted religion into a meaningless cant of convenience.

them to complain about the

It is

hardly for

refusal of the Jewish state

to sanction their perversions. That which they polluted in the Galut, let

tragedy

when

them not bring

There

here.

halachic conversion

is

is

refused.

no epic Every

The alien who seeks to come into the state may not be happy with the conditions of entry but he has his choice: Accept them or do not enter. No one forces him to do either. His is the choice when he nation has

its rules.

refuses to accept either the logic or rationale of the dictat-

ing state. There here, there

may

may

be individual “principle” involved

be political issues, and there

personal ego and stubbornness, but epic tragedy.

A man may

let

may

be

us not speak of

dwell for decades in a state

and assume that this should morally bestow citizenship upon him, but it does not. He must still do what all others do and apply through the legal channels. If he refuses he has no right to complain. The door to citizenship and equal status with others is before him. He needs only to reason, I

move let

his feet.

If

he refuses

whatever

him stop complaining about compulsion.

have deliberately not spoken yet about the question

of splitting the nation but surely this truly

to, for

dedicated

Jews

will

is

consider to

something that be the most

OUR CHALLENGE important of considerations. The Jew

who

162

believes that

the origin of the Jewish people began at Sinai with the

creation of a religio-nation, with the nation committed to a specific Jewish teaching

who

and way of

considers halacha as that

way of

life, is

life.

We

the

Jew

are not

dealing here with a political or economic ideology that is

subject to basic

compromise and good

will.

To

be sure,

good will is needed within the broadest possible framework of halacha. But good will cannot make of it what it is not. It cannot create something from nothing or nothing from something. Halacha is a way of life and any rabbi and Jewish judge who is not blessed with the warmth and compassion to stretch halacha to

its

outermost

leniency betrays his task.

limits in order to find

Koach d’heteyra adif

power of leniency takes

priority)

is

maxims of Jewish

and the

efforts of the great

law,

surely

ish rabbinic leaders in history to find

leniency, are legendary.

(the

one of the great

koach

Jew-

d’heteyra,

How much effort and how much

must be put into the most learned of attempts to find a solution of leniency. But leniency must be based on truth and must be culled from halacha itself. If halacha is to have any meaning it cannot become a figurehead, a mere ornament. Halacha lives and guides us and while we shine the light of leniency upon it, we cannot see in it that which is not there or ignore that which is patently struggle

apparent.

We

have been subject

in recent years to ignorant,

unlearned statements concerning the “House of Hillel”

and “Shammai.” Ignoramuses who do not halacha at those

all

who do

believe in

have dinned into our ears the thought that not desire to bend

—and break

halacha to

The Chosen State: Character and Personality

163

House of Shammai, the traditionally stricter Talmudic school. The charges reflect only on the empty heads of those who level them. Neither the House of Hillel nor the House of Shammai of Talmudic times sought to purposely ban or allow. Halacha was a thing that was true whatever the ruling was, strict or lenient, and none sought to curry favor suit

them are

tyrants of the

with politicians or others.

Both schools sought to

it

thought

Each loved Jews deeply and seeking happiness for

all

Each school was possible.

rule with truth.

sought to find leniency when

their

it

lives

were spent

Jews.

many

power of leniency can create and avert but there are some things that are clear and unbending for none to deny. Certain things compel us to say: “Hadin yikov et ha’har” (“Let the law pierce the mountain.”) The definition of a Jew is fixed by halacha, it is not subject to the whims and vagaries and false leniencies of the transitory times. And if halacha speaks out clearly and finally, the Jew who is bound by halacha and who understands that but for it there is no reason for separate Jewish existence let alone a state of its own cannot and will not budge from Thus, there are

things that the

—

—

its

truth.

The Knesset may vote overwhelmingly to define a Jew any way it sees fit, but the halachic Jew will stand and say: You have no right, you have no power, your in

definition

is

Thus

it

not binding. will

And

it

to recognize the Knesset-created

us understand something

overdue.

will

not be.

happen that the halachic Jew

Jew

will refuse

as a Jew.

whose understanding

And is

let

long

OUR CHALLENGE The halachic Jew Shearim. earlocks.

164

Mea He is not only the Jew of the kaftan and the He is also the Jew who serves and falls with the

defense forces, the

not only the chasid of

is

Jew of

ment, the hundreds of thousands of Jews of believe in the divinity of Torah

He

move-

the religious kibbutz

Israel

who

and the sancrosanctity of

Jew of misnamed and misunderstood Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai. In a word, there is not an observant Jew in the state who will recognize a definition of a Jew that is not based on halacha Here, halacha.

is

the

.

the Jews of Kibbutz Ha’dati will join hands with the

men

of

Mea

Shearim. The result

will

be a disastrous and

irrevocable split of the Jewish people. Worse,

a needless

split,

and

it

is

it

will

be

time for the defenders of

halacha to cease their defensive posture and cry out that it

will

be a

split

brought about because of the stub-

bornness, intransigence, and irrational hatred of religion

on the part of the opponents of halacha. For the halachic Jew there is a religious principle here that outweighs life itself. For his opponents there is neither principle nor argument. There is no argument, for the one who truly wishes to become Jewish is not barred but only told to follow the halachic procedures.

And

there

is

no

principle, for the real reason for the

vociferous obstinacy of the extreme opponents of halacha is

their deep-seated hatred of the religious.

one area of religion that they

fight.

It is

not any

Their real aim

is

the uprooting of religion as a meaningful force in Jewish life.

If

we speak of

extremists in Israel, mention of the

secular extremist circles

There

is

is

no need for a

long overdue. split.

There

is

only the need

The Chosen State: Character and Personality

165

how much this definition of a Jew means halachic Jew, how much, to him, this goes to the

to recognize to the

very core of Jewish existence.

It

calls for the

most

elementary respect for the deepest feelings of a fellow

Jew

as measured against the far shallower opposition

to those feelings.

It

calls for the

knowledge that the

who truly wishes to become a Jew is not barred from doing so except by his own stubbornness. Above individual

all, it calls

for deep introspection

questioning of oneself: that

I

should

split

Is

really so

it

Ahavat

whether there their

Yisroel

is

Jew

would do well

me Those who

important to

for his alleged

to ask themselves

any greater danger to that concept than

own conduct

in

a Jew. The time has leftists

self-criticism, the

the Jewish nation in half?

so easily castigate the observant lack of

and

opposing the halachic definition of

come

to isolate the psychopathic

and pseudo-intellectuals whose hatred of

so effectively mirrors their

There

is

religion

self-disgust.

a similarly needless and disastrous clash

on the question of offers the

own

way

civil

marriage. Halacha certainly

of leniency in

all

but the fewest of cases.

no doubt that certain marriages are forbidden, such as Jew to non-Jew, incestuous unions, kohen (priest) to divorcee, mamzer (bastard) (only one who is the offspring of an incestuous or adulterous relationship) to non -mamzer. We shall not play games. These are forbidden marriages and no rabbi will perform them. And so there is a cry: Civil marriage! Or a more elegant one: Civil marriage for those who are barred from religious marriage. I shall add only a word or two here about those whose real aim is not civil marriage but There

is

OUR CHALLENGE also civil divorce, something that

number of mamzerim but a

would increase the

disastrously. Civil marriage

is

which will two camps, with one refusing If this is what we truly want

step leading to civil divorce,

first

truly split the nation into

to marry into the other. it is

166

ours for the asking.

But for those

who

are sincerely troubled by the

on the part of the rabbinate to marry certain couples, let us examine those disabled couples. It is true that under no circumstances whatever does halacha recognize an incestuous marriage, and there may indeed be some who will insist that a civil law should be created to allow marriage between mother and son or brother and sister on the grounds that the law should not limit any conduct so long as that conduct refusal

does not harm others. those

who

will

It

may be

true that there will be

—as in certain western countries —

insist

on recognizing the marriage of two homosexual males For these, halacha has no answer; its ban is clear and absolute and one hopes that the pro-

or females.

ponents of

civil

marriage in these cases

will

be accorded

the contempt they deserve.

Then there

is

there

the question of intermarriage. True,

is

absolutely no sanction, a priori or a posteriori,

for intermarriage under halacha

marry a non-Jew; a rabbi;

will

marriage

A

will

Jew

is

forbidden to

not be performed by

not be recognized under any circumstances.

more than a few among the nihilists our ranks who oppose this. They would open the doors

There in

it

his

.

are, indeed,

to the disaster that Jews fought so successfully through

two millennia of Exile and

to which they

succumb so

The Chosen State: Character and Personality disastrously in the “free” western world.

167

The destruction

Jew can be accomplished in the furnaces of it can also come about through intermarriage that destroys the Jewish identity of the couple and its offspring. One hopes that the vast majority of nationalof the

Auschwitz;

istic

Jews

will

understand the

vital

importance, to the

ban on intermarriage, and will reject the demands of those who, had they been the Jews of the Middle Ages, would have guaranteed that today a problem such as this one would not exist, since they would long since have as-

existence of the Jewish nation, of the halachic

similated out of existence.

But there are other bans. Consider the ban on

mamzer and non -mamzer or a number of other bans mentioned in the Torah. The rabbinate will refuse to marry these. Is it then not “fair” to allow them to utilize civil marriage? marriage between kohen and divorcee or

Before replying,

let

us understand something that

is

basic to Judaism.

What is “fair” or not “fair” within the context of human understanding is not always the simple thing it is made out to be by simplistic people. What is “right” and what

is

“not right” for the Jew has never been a

subjective thing, to be judged by his

own

cultural imperative.

It

man on

the basis of

has certainly never been

something to be measured by transient, temporary standards. That which has been true for generations

cannot be dislodged with nary a thought because of the impatience of one generation, though in the

it

be the

latest

chain of history. The Jews are an eternal people

with eternal values, and eternity

is

not subject to the

OUR CHALLENGE passing

modes and fashions of

ideology.

The Jews

168

are a

people with divine values, and these infinite

divine

truths are not to be passed upon or rejected by finite and human animals. Halacha has been the savior of the Jewish people, that which allowed it to survive through the impossibility of Exile; that which gave it strength, pride, and selfrespect; that which gave meaning to existence, an

existence that

much

so meaningless and subject to so

is

doubt for those who rejected halacha. The greatness and sole strength of halacha lies in

why

cling to

pillar

give

it?

And

its

that strength

is

divinity, otherwise

decimated and the

upon which it stands is eliminated when it must way before a generation that cries “Unfair.”

Unfair to finite eyes, perhaps, but the individual

touches must

this “unfairness”

bow

whom

to the majesty

and

greatness of a halacha which alone saved a people,

gave

strength to continue, and bestows

upon

it

the

majesty of eternity.

“fair” to all people

and

what

a few sacrifice so that

it

society

What law is does not demand

may continue to exist? And one day, the one who was touched by “unfairness” will understand that society

it

was not

really so.

It is

not by the standards of

finite

and halacha abide. Let the law pierce the mountain, but the law must pre-

“fairness” that the Jewish people

vail.

Or we,

as a people, will not prevail.

But there say that this Is

it

more. Those

is

is

cry for civil marriage

the only solution.

is

a solution?

solution, then

who

And

if

Is

that solution

that really true? is

considered a

there not a far better way, one that does

not question the absolute supremacy and authority of

halacha?

The Chosen State: Character and Personality

What in

happen

will

community

religious

a

civil

marriage law

the rabbinate recognize

Will

Israel?

if

recognize

it?

is

passed

Will the

The answer

it?

negative in both cases. But that does not matter, retort.

We

169

is

the

is

are not interested in whether the rabbinate or

the religious

Jew recognizes

it.

We

want

it

to be recog-

nized officially by the state.

So,

this

is

proponents of

what apparently really troubles the marriage. That under present law

civil

non -halachically. Is this the is no need for civil marriage; to is no need at all to introduce the

the state will not marry one

problem? For solve this

this there

problem there

non-Jewish concept of

civil

marriage, a thing that

first step toward civil divorce would catastrophically divide the nation. Halacha itself gives a way out. For while, a priori,

threatens to be only the that

no rabbi

will

perform a marriage banned by halacha

marriages that are forbidden marriages involving gentiles and incest riages by the

Torah a

— are

—except

,

all

those

recognized as mar-

though the couples

posteriori even

disobeyed the injunction against them. Let us consider the case of a kohen and a divorcee or a

mamzer and non -mamzer. Faced

with the refusal of

a rabbi to marry them what would happen

ence of two proper witnesses, the

woman

man

unto him? Such a marriage

calling for a divorce to dissolve

it,

is

if,

in the pres-

betrothed the a binding one,

and although the

two have sinned and disobeyed the Torah, the marriage is valid. Certainly the religious stigma remains, but would that stigma be any less under civil marriage? And, in any case, do the opponents of halacha really care? Assuming that they are sincere in their avowals that their

OUR CHALLENGE sole purpose

170

to allow the couple to be married

is

have their marriage recognized by the

no need to introduce

civil

marriage.

The

and

state, there is

state

can

insist

that the marriage be recorded as a legal one, reading

“married

— in a priori violation

of Torah law.”

The ad-

no way bother those who are not interested in Torah law and who have achieved all that they say they wanted a recognized state marriage. To say that there are no problems that halacha

ditional

wording should

in

—

cannot solve to the satisfaction of the secular public

would be

come it,

to

lie.

But halacha, unlike politicians, did not

into being to cater to the public but rather to raise

uplift

it,

and

numbers of cases

sanctify

it.

that pose

very few in number, and

it

On

the other hand, the

permanent problems are is

only the voices of the

demagogues who magnify the problem for their own ends. This chapter is titled “The Chosen State Character and Personality.” I repeat that the Jewish people has a peculiar, distinct, separate, and holy character and that the state must both recognize this and incorporate that distinctiveness and holiness into itself. The state and the society within it must be clearly recognized as a Jewish state and society. From the mezuzot that should be af-

—

fixed to the public gates

Jewish areas

—even in predominantly non-

—to the laws dealing with the identity of the

Jewish people and their personal status, to the public scene, everything should cry out the the beholder: see, this is the

The

Jewish

You

state!

religio-national character of the Jewish people

must find voice and substance in the state that it calls its own. The offensive behavior of a national Jewish

The Chosen State: Character and Personality

171

organization in the Galut that schedules a nonkosher

dinner as part of

its

“Jewish”

activities or that publicly

desecrates the Jewish Sabbath,

than

Jewish

the

state

no more offensive

is

desecrates

that

national

its

character through state violations of halacha.

not matter that the individual

is

nonobservant.

does

It

When

he

represents a Jewish group he represents Jewish tradition

and honor. And the

state,

although

majority of secular people, in represents Jewishness

it

be

made up

of a

capacity as a state

its

and Judaism.

How

utterly lack-

ing in any semblance of self-respect for the Jewish state to spit in the face of

responsible for In the end tradition

its

its

own Jewish

existence in the

tradition that

is

first place.

we must blend together our

respect for

and the character of our people and state with good will. Such is the way of peace and

tolerance and

Jewish existence. civil strife,

Any

other path

is

that of deadly hate,

and Jewish disaster. At the same time, how-

ever, let us never forget that

we came

here to the

Land

of Israel to build a Jewish, not a western country. is

It

Jewish values that are true, not western values (or

What

and true is not to be determined by liberalism or democracy or progressive circles. Our youth must be imbued with Jewish concepts and our state must be shaped and characterized by them. eastern, for that matter).

is

right

8 Tbe Destiny And

so

it is

idea. It

is

sum up. What is new idea. It is the

time to

not a

written here

is

an

ancient, majestic,

eternally glorious idea of Judaism, the idea that

was

the mainstream of Jewish thinking throughout history

and that within recent times became and confused. It is a call to return to that

lost,

modified,

idea, to the only

Judaism and Jewishness that makes any kind of logical sense and serves any sort of logical reason for continuity. It is

a

Above

call to

change a land of Jews into a Jewish land.

all, it is

a

call for greatness.

The Destinv

The Jewish people and people and state they are

—

the rest.

We

state are not just

one more

spiritually greater

are not simply one

more

little,

than

all

superfluous

nation but the heart and the reason for the world. will

173

We

not be allowed to be small and indifferent, but rather

a people of greatness, of sacrifice, of majesty.

We

dare

not opt for mediocrity, smallness of vision, or the ordinary.

We

have been chosen for a great

role,

one that

demands of us the ability to reject superficiality, to understand what is important and what is vain nonsense, and to be prepared to sacrifice in order to reach the spiritual heights. Israel will never be one more nation like all the nations. It will be a special and unique place to build the Jewish society.

Perhaps the greatest is

sin of those

who

lead the state

their refusal or inability to recognize the miracle

uniqueness of the Jewish people and

state.

and

They have

treated the great events of our time with mundaneness,

as part of a magnificent but normal course of history.

They have treated Jews like any other people, albeit more clever or tenacious, and the state as arising from blood and valor, but basically the same as any other state. They refuse to recognize the divine quality and uniqueness of the Jew and his state and are embarrassed and angry when these special qualities and destiny are spoken about. That which the Almighty has given us time after

time in our days has been downgraded, profaned, and

made normal and In a sense,

the people,

secular by the leaders of the state.

must be sadly stated, they have cheapened and their punishment is that the people have

it

OUR CHALLENGE come

174

to accept the secularization of the miracle of

Return.

must be changed. We must recognize our greatness, we must acknowledge our uniqueness, we must All that

greet the miracle of our times with the

that they deserve.

We

must look

mirror of history and gasp: great

“We

and unique people and we

awe and joy

at ourselves in the

are indeed a spiritually live in

an era of divine

redemption! Our land must be a Jewish one, with the

whose character and thinking

idea expressed in a state

We

must learn to allow the love of each fill our minds and hearts and never to permit ourselves to narrow our identity to any one community. There is no American Jew, there is no Yemenite Jew, there is no Israeli Jew. There remains only the Jew. For us, Jewish problems come first. For us, there is no illusion of permanent allies except the Jew. For us, there can be no dichotomy, no split loyalties: all our loyalty is to one “ism,” Judaism. For us, the yardstick by which we judge a problem, our actions and reactions, remains: Is it good for the Jew? Much that I say here will bring down the wrath of

are Jewish,”

and every Jew to

the assimilated Jew, yet

Jew

exists

ish state.

I

insist

once again that such a

by the hundreds of thousands within the JewHis

is

the assimilation of ideas, his

is

the

absorption of foreign bodies and concepts so that he no longer recognizes what

is

Jewish thinking.

out and protest and condemn. others

who

will cry

be joined by

are afraid to think the unthinkable and speak

the unspeakable even though If

He may

He

there

is

it

may be

true.

one thing that a Jew must always

The Destiny

remember “No,”

if

it

is

he, the

175

that although the vast majority says

Jew, believes “Yes,” he

continue

will

and to do. We are the sons of Abraham HaTvri, the one from the other side. And our rabbis teach us that it was the one man Abraham who stood on the one side of a belief while the whole world stood on the other, and who dared to say: “I am right.” Noisy journalists and loud politicians are not always right and neither is the majority, necessarily. The Jew to believe, to teach,

has always been a minority and has always had the

courage and the “brazenness” to way.

right

That say is

is

it.

What do

insist that his is the

the people say?

not the point.

If

you

Do

believe that

In time, they will understand

they agree?

you are

and accept

it.

right,

Yours

not to fear unacceptability or unpopularity but rather

to serv£ as a gadfly, as the

one who knows what must

who says and does who gives the timid courage to follow. That which the man of courage says today, the timid be said and what must be done, and

it first,

the one

majority will proclaim tomorrow; that which the lonely

minority dares to do now, the myopic will later understand and copy.

The man of

vision has a task

— to drag

And

although

the unwilling up the path of greatness.

they stone him today,

tomorrow they

will

pay him the

greatest of all flattery, imitation.

There are many Jews within the Land who agree with what has been written here. There are

know

that a change

must take place and that the

of government should

maximum that

has

reins

be given over to those with

many who realize been done by those who have been

Jewish values. There are

much good

many who

OUR CHALLENGE in

power

all

176

these years but that the things that have

not been done or that have been undone are far more

dangerous, although they

we

that

when

live

it is

in

very

an

may

not be seen as yet, and

illusion that will be dispelled only

late.

But even these Jews are stricken by that national

malady, hopelessness. There

and a

is

a sense of cynical despair

feeling that nothing can be changed.

The same

same group, the same leaders have been in power all these years and no one has ever been able to move them out. The legendary power of the government becomes a smothering blanket that paralyzes any real will to change. The Rebbe of Kotzk once pondered over the halacha psuka (clear law) that one who finds a lost item in the street need not return it, although he knows who the owner is and where he lives, so long as he also knows people, the

that the loser of the object has despaired of finding

“How

is

“that the holy

it

possible,”

asked the

it.

Hasidic sage,

and righteous Torah should not make

incumbnent upon a finder who knews the

it

loser’s identity

to return the item to him?”

“But,” replied the Kotzker, “there

upon He despaired. A Jew here, a fine

is

a punishment

He

lost

hope.

not allowed to lose hope!”

Things can be changed changed. Only

is

the loser of the object.

because they must be

the hopeless will drink the bitter dregs

own hopelessness, and they will deserve to. will know that change occurs when there is a

of their

Others total,

dedicated ideology and effort, a determination to

move on

to Jewish destiny

effect the eternal

and to teach and put

Jewish truths.

into

The Destiny

We

must

instill

in

our youth, and

deep national pride, but we must

177

in ourselves,

realize, too, that all

the secular nationalism in the world will not suffice to

Jewish exclusiveness.

justify justifies

It

only religion that

is

nationalism and, indeed,

is

it

impossible to

speak of Judaism without connecting the two. Judaism is

religio-nationalism.

And

if it is

true that there can be

religious aspect of nationalism

is

no Judaism

removed,

that there can be

no meaningful Judaism

aspect of religion

is

if

it

the

if

follows

the national

removed. Perhaps the greatest error

camp

and

sin of the religious

the

narrowing of the religious concept.

is

in

its

acquiescence in

Among

the

secular Jews, one does not equate great Jewish problems

with the religious leadership. There have arisen in the

minds of the public “national” problems and “religious” ones.

Ask

the secularist what the religious parties and

leaders are interested in

and he

will

immediately think of

Shabbat or kashrut or marriage and divorce. He

will

never connect religious circles with the leadership in the struggle for “national” questions. in his

mind, are

It is

not they who,

in the forefront in the battle for Soviet

or Syrian Jewry, the struggle to retain the liberated lands, or the fight against

Arab

terror.

And

the absence

of religious leadership here, their acquiescence in the

separation of religious issues from “national” ones

is

a

falsification of Judaism. The religious sectors have, in practice, narrowed the meaning of religion and thus have

crippled Judaism.

To less

be religious

is

to be nationalist.

Shabbat

is

no

but no more of interest and concern to the observant

Jew than

the territories and security and Soviet and

OUR CHALLENGE Syrian Jewry.

178

We must return to the original definition of

Judaism as a religio-national concept, a concern for all aspects of Jewish life. Just as the Sabbath or marriage and divorce are not “religious” problems but Jewish religio-national ones, so are the so-called “secular” or

“national” problems Jewish religio-national ones.

The

and narrowing of Judaism must change as must the inferiority complex that has seized so many religio-national Jews. They have come to believe the limiting

spread by the professional anti-religious, that they

libel

somehow less secularist. Enough

nationalistic or patriotic than the

are

of that. The time has come for selfand the sure knowledge that the religio-national way is the Jewish way. The time has come to create a proud and dynamic religio-national camp that not only reacts, but acts, that takes the lead on all issues in Jewish life, that evokes respect and admiration. The time has come to express firmly and loudly the religio-national pride

truths:

The Jewish

nation, formed at Sinai as a divine

religio-nation; chosen, special, hallowed,

and

set

apart

with an eternal mission to study, practice, and model

themselves by the Torah.

A

bound by eternal and unbreakable bonds; whose every Jew is brother and sister to every other Jew; whose obligation of Ahavat Yisroel demands the utmost love and sacrifice on behalf of a suffering Jew; whose unity is clear and is not divided by false and artificial boundaries of class struggle; and whose Jewish nation that

interests take

A

is

precedence over those of others.

land that

is

hallowed and given to us by the

The Destiny Creator and Possessor of all the earth; which over to partition; which

any other people. A state which which has the

which has,

is

not given

not the property or right of

is

the trustee of

right to

is

179

all

the Jewish people,

demand support from them and

in return, the obligation to protect

them;

which must work to bring them home from the four corners of the earth.

A

state that

must teach

its

own citizens the meaning

of Ahavat Yisroel so as to overcome the evils of poverty,

and anarchy of values; that must learn to bridge the chasm of hate between differing groups. A state that must teach its youth that they are part

social injustice,

of the Jewish people before they are part of the Israeli

must teach its youth the and Judaism from childhood on.

state or of themselves: that

beauties of

A

heritage

its

state that

must be Jewish

or like the other nations

— in

its

— not western or secular

character and personality

and behavior.

A

people, land, and state with a destiny that

is

sure

and unchangeable.

We

live,

today,

in

the

dawn

of the final redemption,

and the footsteps of the Messiah can be clearly heard. The Jewish Destiny is determined and no force on earth can prevent its coming. The question remains whether we will hasten it so that it comes swiftly and painlessly or whether its arrival will be delayed and arrive only after needless suffering and tragedy. “I am the L-rd, in its time will hurry it (the redemption).” These words I

of the Prophet Isaiah are brought of the

*

Talmud who

down by

ask: ‘if the redemption

the rabbis

comes

in

OUR CHALLENGE ‘its

then

it,

how

time’ then

“If Israel merits the in the

it

will surely

There

is

He

But even

time.

its

come

‘its

it?’

redemption by repentance and

Jewish G-d, then

before

And if He hurries time?”’ And they reply:

G-d ‘hurry

not arrive in

will

it

will

180

in its

will

faith

hurry the redemption

if Israel

does not merit

appointed time.*

it,

9

an appointed time for the Jewish Destiny

to reach fulfillment,

world can stand

and no power or superpower

in the

way of

in the

the Divine decree.

The

tragedy, however, remains the Jewish refusal to merit

and thus hasten the Redemption so that it arrives swiftly, with breathtaking glory and with a minimum of tragedy and suffering. It is within our power to demand from the Almighty that He deliver the Jewish people and establish His Kingdom. All we need do is return to the law and to faith in Him. But even if we do not, though we will pay heavily for it in terms of lives and pain, it

let

us never forget that there

and

that time

though

his

is

is

now He who .

“an appointed time,” does not believe

this,

eyes have seen the magnificent miracles

The State of Israel, as the people who give it its name, is indestructible. Let us stop wailing over the irrelevant and meaningless threats from empty and transitory superpowers. If we believe and we return to G-d, if we believe and refuse to com-

of our days,

truly blind.

is

promise the great miracle of our time by withdrawal

and

retreat, the

Redemption

is

within our hands. Fear,

confusion, hopelessness? Quite the opposite!

What bring

all

will

be the end? The Messiah will come and

our people home, there to create a

state that

The Destiny

will

be a light unto the nations. Until then,

it is

to survive, to reach out to our Jewishness

up

to our unique, chosen,

and

181

our task

and to

live

separate role: the creation

of a Torah people and state. Indeed, there spiritual Jewish Defense League,

is

one that

a need for a will call for

policies designed to defend Jews spiritually as well

as physically.

Let us not be ashamed of that role and of our task.

by the sneers and the smears of the ignorant and the self-haters. Let us, by all means, love each and every one of them, but let us insist that Let us not be driven from

it

they face the central question: Will Israel be a Jewish state or not?

Shame? Quite faction,

and joy

“Happy pleasant our

Rather pride,

satis-

in the challenge.

how good is our portion, and how and how beautiful our inheritance.”

are we, lot,

the opposite.

ourchallengeOOmeir ourchallengeOOmeir

Boston Public Library Copley Square

General Library

The Date Due Card

in the pocket indi-

cates the date on or before

which

this

book should be returned to the Library. Please do not remove cards from this pocket.

from

OUR CHALLENGE

“The Jewish people and state

—

state are not just

one more people and

they are spiritually greater than all the rest.

simply one more

little

We

are not

superfluous nation and state but the heart

and reason for the world.” •

“The normal rules of nationhood and statehood do not apply us; the normal logic of foreign policy is not ours.”

“Should they

more

insist

of Jewish

upon war

that

we

home.’

—know

told the It

was

is

.

that he

Arabs

.

is

.

who

bellows forth,

a robber

that this

is

....

It

‘I

to

a great deal

territory that will yet return to its rightful

“Let every Jew in Israel not a Jew’

again, then there

.

am

was not

owners.”

an

Israeli,

as Israelis

our land, that ‘we have come

as Jews.”

CHILTON BOOK COMPANY

Radnor, Pennsylvania

6023

•'.V.